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http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2013/01/16/obamas-second-inauguration-charts/#commentsThu, 17 Jan 2013 06:37:41 +0000http://politicalastrologyblog.com/?p=7140The second inauguration of President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to take place in just a few days.
This inauguration is unique because January 20 falls on a Sunday, which caused organizers to ...

]]>The second inauguration of President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to take place in just a few days.

This inauguration is unique because January 20 falls on a Sunday, which caused organizers to move the public ceremony to the following day, Monday, January 21, 2013.

However, according to the Constitution, the transition from one presidential term to another always officially takes place at noon on the January 20th following the election, and so Obama and Biden are planning on having a private ceremony to take their oaths on the 20th as well.

This creates a bit of a problem for astrologers since it potentially gives us two different inception charts for the inauguration. Naturally this raises the question of which is the correct chart that will indicate the future of Obama’s second term.

I will present both of the inauguration charts below, and discuss some of their potential implications.

The Two Inauguration Charts for the Second Term

Below are the two inauguration charts for Obama’s second term. Both of these assume a noon time in Washington, DC, which is probably pretty close to when each will occur, although we will update the article to reflect the exact times once the events take place.

January 20, 2013 at 12:00 p.m. in Washington, DC

January 21, 2013 at 12:00 p.m. in Washington, DC

Ominous Indications in the January 20 Chart

One of the things that we noted back in September when we recorded a podcast episode on the presidential election was that, regardless of who won the election, the alignment of the planets at the time of the official inauguration on January 20, 2013 looked kind of ominous. We made this observation for two reasons:

First, due to the prominence of the planet Mars in the 10th whole sign house in a day chart. Mars was traditionally viewed by ancient astrologers as the planet of war, strife, and bloodshed, especially in day charts. The presence of Mars in an angular house in the inauguration chart raises the potential that some of the themes associated with Mars will become more prominent during this presidential term.

Second, because not only is Mars prominent in the 10th house in the chart, but the Moon, which is in the 1st house at 19° Taurus, is applying to a square with Mars at 20° Aquarius within a degree of orb, which is a specific condition of affliction. This emphasizes the role of Mars in the chart even more, and makes it so that whatever negative event is signified by Mars is likely to emerge at some point in the not-too-distant future, under the conventional premise that applying aspects indicate developments in the future while separating aspects indicate the past.

Basically, we’ve got a problem here, because there is a distinctly negative alignment that is very prominent in the inauguration chart.

Past Instances of a Prominent Mars in Inauguration Charts

In order to get a sense for how frequent such alignments are, and what it has coincided with in the past, I went back and checked every inauguration chart since the 1930s. This was pretty easy since the inauguration has always taken place at noon on January 20 in Washington, DC since 1937.

Here is a list of all past instances in which Mars has been more prominent by being in an angular whole sign house in the inauguration chart. Keep in mind that the resulting indications associated with Mars would then apply to the following four years of each presidency:

2001 – George W. Bush’s 1st term

1989 – George H. W. Bush

1981 – Ronald Reagan’s 1st term

1969 – Richard Nixon’s 1st term

1949 – Harry S. Truman’s 2nd term

1937 – Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 2nd term

One of the most notable themes, of course, is that several of these presidential terms coincided with major wars – Bush Jr. (Afghanistan, Iraq), Bush Sr. (Gulf War), and Truman (Korean War) especially, although even Nixon oversaw the escalation of the Vietnam War, while Roosevelt’s second term saw the beginning of WWII in Europe and his push for rearmament, which eventually culminated in the US officially entering the war in 1941.

One troubling point here is that the only two charts in this list that not only had Mars angular but also had it in the 10th house were Truman’s second and Reagan’s first inauguration, which both saw serious attempts on the life of the President. And while Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration chart did not feature a prominent Mars in terms of it being angular, in that chart the Moon’s next exact aspect was a square to Mars. This is, of course, only one astrological factor out of many that were involved in each of these situations, so we need to be careful about putting too much emphasis on it alone.

The Alternate January 21 Inauguration Chart

If you compare the January 20th chart to the January 21st chart, the major difference is that the Moon changes signs and moves into Gemini, which changes the chart in such a way that it goes from having one of the worst possible electional aspects (Moon square Mars by day) to having one of the best possible electional aspects (Moon conjunct Jupiter by day).

Now, Mars is still prominent in the chart as a result of being in an angular house, but there is a major shift in emphasis as a result of the Moon no longer applying to the square with Mars, and the chart looks much less foreboding as a result of it. In fact, despite the prominence of Mars, the placement of the Moon in the 2nd with Jupiter and applying to a trine with Mercury seems to imply some sort of silver lining, so that although Mars-related themes become more prominent during the term, in other areas things prosper, particularly in the area of financial matters (2nd house), which presumably in this context refers to the economy.

So the second chart for January 21 looks remarkably better. But the question is: does it matter?

When Does the Second Term Officially Begin?

It is curious that in this year January 20 happened to fall on a Sunday, forcing the public ceremony to be moved to a remarkably more astrologically auspicious date. Is this perhaps a positive indication, where there was a delay of an event that otherwise always happens on the same date every four years?

Ultimately this is going to come down to a question of when Obama’s second presidential term officially begins. What is the most symbolically significant moment that represents the true beginning of the new term?

Unfortunately it seems that the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution stipulates that the President’s term will always officially begin at noon on January 20th. This was ratified in 1933, and it is the reason why Inauguration Day always takes place on January 20.

While I think that one could make different arguments about this, and it is notable that the public inauguration will take place the following day, it seems that this amendment necessarily requires that the correct chart for Obama’s second term will be the January 20 chart.

This is evidently the opinion of the Obama administration as well, since they still plan to hold a private swearing in ceremony on the 20th. Perhaps if they had decided not to even hold a private ceremony on that date, then there might be more of an argument for the 21st as the correct chart. But as it stands, the administration also appears to be under the impression that the 20th is when his second term officially begins. That being the case, it appears that January 20 at noon will be the correct chart.

—

Update 1: January 20, 2013 at 9:10 PM MST

The President and Vice President ended up taking their oaths of office at separate times in separate locations today, and we have exact times for both oaths.

Biden took the oath of office during a small private ceremony at the Vice President’s residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. He finished at 8:21 AM EST.

There is a bit of an interesting issue here, because since 1937 the President and Vice President have always taken the oath of office together, right around the same time and in the same place. Today they took their oaths more than 3 hours apart though, which resulted in a different rising sign for each.

Obama’s chart for taking the oath was essentially the same as the chart that was posted earlier in this article for January 20, since he took the oath just before noon. The chart for when Biden took the oath has Aquarius rising though, which shifts all of the planets to different houses, and makes the ruler of the ascendant a different planet.

Unfortunately the malefics are still quite prominent, although there are some interesting differences in this chart compared to Obama’s. For example, the ruler of the ascendant is in the 10th rather than the 9th, while Mars has shifted to the 1st rather than the 10th. Here is the chart:

This provides us with an interesting issue to work out, which is whether the noon charts still apply to both the President and the Vice President, since that is legally when their new terms begin according to the Constitution, or whether the symbolic significance associated with taking the oaths of office is enough to represent the true beginning of each new term.

This is something that we will actually be able to test in this instance since Biden’s oath chart is significantly different from Obama’s. If Biden’s path from this point forward diverges and becomes significantly different from Obama’s for some reason during the course of this term, then it may be a good indication that it really is the oath that counts rather than the noon chart.

But then again, the legal implicates of the noon charts may still trump the symbolic significance of the oaths, and thus there would be no change. Check out the comments section below for some different perspectives on this issue.

—

Update 2: January 21, 2013 at 10:45 AM MST

Biden just took the oath of office for a second time at 11:47 AM EST on January 21, and then Obama took the oath at 11:51 AM EST.

At 12:42 AM EST Obama he signed some of the first documents of his second term, which were for cabinet nominations: Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, John Kerry for Secretary of State, Jack Lew for Treasury Secretary, and John Brennan for Director of the CIA. Not directly relevant to the inauguration, but these could be useful times for the chronology of these four people.

]]>http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2013/01/16/obamas-second-inauguration-charts/feed/18http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2013/01/16/obamas-second-inauguration-charts/Romney Meets With Obama at the White Househttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ThePoliticalAstrologyBlog/~3/u4SFMwfJlF0/
http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/11/30/romney-meets-with-obama-at-the-white-house/#commentsFri, 30 Nov 2012 21:52:50 +0000http://politicalastrologyblog.com/?p=7112Mitt Romney met with President Obama at the White House for a private lunch yesterday, November 29, 2012.
The meeting was the first between the two since the final presidential debate last month on October 22.
Obama ...

]]>Mitt Romney met with President Obama at the White House for a private lunch yesterday, November 29, 2012.

The meeting was the first between the two since the final presidential debate last month on October 22.

Obama had made a statement in his victory speech on the night of the election saying that he would like to meet with Romney at some point in the future in order to talk about how they could work together in order to move the country forward.

Romney has largely tried to stay out of the public eye over the past few weeks since Election Day, making this his first semi-public appearance since November 6.

The meeting was completely closed to the press, and not much is known about what the two discussed, aside from some canned statements from the White House saying that they talked about the importance of maintaining “America’s leadership in the world” and that they agreed to “stay in touch” in the future.

Earlier in the day Romney also met with Paul Ryan for breakfast in Washington, DC.

Closure for Romney, and Fulfillment of a Prediction

In our original prediction about the presidential election issued on April 29, 2012 the authors of the Political Astrology Blog noted that there was some important activity in Romney’s chart about 3 weeks after the election, which suggested that he would not have final closure over the matter until that time:

One additional point that is interesting about Romney’s L3 Virgo-L4 Pisces period on election day is that this is actually a foreshadowing period for a Loosing of the Bond that will take place later in the month, from November 26-29, 2012. There is something about what happens on election night that is connected to a change or a transition in Romney’s career and life direction that won’t fully materialize until a few weeks after the election. It is not clear if this pertains to Romney simply making a final personal decision about what he wants to do with his life a few weeks after losing the election, or if there is something about the election itself that isn’t resolved or finished until that time.

In our prediction we weren’t sure if the indications in Romney’s chart meant that the outcome of the election itself would be delayed until 3 weeks after Election Day, or if it was some sort of personal matter for Romney that would be fully concluded until that time. We were able to specify the specific four day time range when the expected event would occur though, and it appears to have been this meeting with Obama at the White House.

Barring any announcements that something concrete came from the meeting, and Romney and Obama actually do plan to work together on something specific in the future, it seems that the underlying purpose of this meeting for Romney was personal. After 3 weeks of downtime, Romney emerged back into the public spotlight briefly in order to meet his former rival at the White House.

I don’t know if Romney had ever been to the White House before, but there is no doubt that it would have been a very symbolically significant moment for him to visit the place that had almost become his home just a few weeks ago, and that he had been striving to obtain for many years now.

]]>http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/11/30/romney-meets-with-obama-at-the-white-house/feed/1http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/11/30/romney-meets-with-obama-at-the-white-house/Mercury Retrograde and Romney’s Project Orcahttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ThePoliticalAstrologyBlog/~3/fNT7tvwQoVc/
http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/11/14/mercury-retrograde-and-romneys-project-orca/#commentsWed, 14 Nov 2012 18:59:42 +0000http://politicalastrologyblog.com/?p=6970In the aftermath of the election, many astrologers were left asking themselves why the Mercury retrograde station on Election Day didn’t coincide with more noticeable delays in the outcome of the election itself.
As more news ...

]]>In the aftermath of the election, many astrologers were left asking themselves why the Mercury retrograde station on Election Day didn’t coincide with more noticeable delays in the outcome of the election itself.

As more news and stories have come out in the past week since the election ended, we have seen some of the ways in which the Mercury retrograde did correlate with significant problems in different parts of the country. It turns out, though, that the biggest story related to the retrograde station on Election Day would take a little bit longer to come out because it was a private issue that occurred within one of the campaigns.

Many astrologers expected that the retrograde would correlate with delays in the outcome of the election, since this is what happened during the 2000 election when Mercury was also retrograde. However, in focusing on delays, astrologers overlooked or under-emphasized some of the more common traits that are usually associated with Mercury retrograde periods, which are technological snafus and miscommunications.

It turns out that what may have been the most decisive event that the Mercury retrograde station coincided with was a major technological snafu that occurred within the Romney campaign on Election Day, which ultimately may have affected the outcome of the election.

Mercury Retrograde and Technological Snafus

One of the cliches about Mercury retrograde periods is that, because astrologers associate Mercury with technology, the periods in which the planet is retrograde tend to coincide with technological snafus.

This is something that we noted in August in our official writeup about what the Mercury retrograde might mean on Election Day:

Mercury retrograde periods happen about three times a year. They are seen as significant because in astrology the planet Mercury is associated with topics such as communication, speech, writing, technology and calculation. When a planet goes retrograde it is deviating from its course and going contrary to its usual direction, and so symbolically this means that there is something about the topics associated with the planet that have similarly been reversed or gone awry.

Astrologers generally associate Mercury retrograde with things like miscommunication, delays, false starts, technological breakdowns, situations lacking in resolution, uncertainty, and times in which previous actions must be revisited.

Physical arenas that are ruled by Mercury seem to go haywire at this time: computers, telephones, printing, all fields related to transportation or communication are particularly vulnerable to malfunctioning during the Mercury retrograde cycles.

While Mercury is retrograde, delays are to be expected. The usual channels of communication become scrambled, devices used for communication are faulty, contacts one needs to make are impossible, etc. Mercury’s retrograde periods have more effects as we become more sophisticated in our communications technology.

Miscommunications, lost information and technology breakdowns are just some of the commonplace occurrences during this three-week time period.

So, the general idea is that there are technological breakdowns during this time, especially with communications technology, and this is actually the reason why in many cases the entire Mercury retrograde period becomes associated with delays.

The Romney Campaign’s Secret Weapon: Project Orca

In the last week of the election, stories started to circulate about a super-secret program that the Romney campaign had designed in order to coordinate their get-out-the-vote efforts on Election Day. The codename of the program was Project Orca.

Project Orca was essentially a smartphone application that was supposed to link together 34,000 Romney campaign volunteers, allowing them to send real-time reports from polling stations around the country, so that the campaign could identify precincts with low voter turnout and then focus more resources on getting people to the polls in those areas.

This is how the Romney campaign described the project in a memo that went out prior to Election Day according to ABC News:

Project ORCA is a massive undertaking – the Republican Party’s newest, unprecedented and most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 presidential election .. It is estimated that Project ORCA will decipher 18 to 23 million people have voted by the time all voting has concluded. This massive “sample size” not only ensure the most accurate ballot projections ever, but it will also ensure hyper-accuracy of our supporter targeting as we work to turn them out to the polls.

The central hub where the project was coordinated and all reports were sent to on Election Day was a makeshift command center that had been set up on the floor of the Boston Garden sports arena, with a task force of 800 volunteers on laptops.

The picture of the headquarters to the right was taken by Josiah Daniel Ryan and posted to Twitter on Election Day.

The Obama campaign had successfully used a similar program in their get-out-the-vote efforts in 2008, calling it Project Narwhal, and so the Romney campaign sought to replicate and surpass that model. The codename “Orca” was chosen by the Romney campaign purportedly because the orca whale is the only known natural predator of the narwhal whale.

By the last week of the election the Romney campaign revealed the existence of Orca. On Monday November 5, Romney Communications Director Gail Gitcho did an interview with PBS News in which she excitedly talked about Orca and how important it would be for the campaign’s ground game on Election Day.

On October 31 the Romney campaign sent the following video out to supporters who would be volunteering with the Orca project task force:

—

The Failure of Project Orca

In the past week after the election ended stories have started to come out about Project Orca running into serious technical issues on Election Day, resulting in what one project volunteer characterized as an “unmitigated disaster”.

Ekdahl is a web developer from Florida who was a part of the Project Orca task force on Election Day. It is really worth reading his entire account in order to understand the full scope of the issues surrounding Orca, although I will try to summarize some of his main points below:

Conference calls that were meant to train volunteers prior to Election Day were not helpful, and questions about potential issues were brushed aside.

There was confusion over an instruction packet that was emailed to volunteers at the last minute, the night before Election Day, with some volunteers receiving no packet at all.

The organizers of the project didn’t tell volunteers that they needed a poll watcher certificate, causing many of them to be turned away from the polls. This was partially due to a typo in the instruction packet that was sent out as a PDF the night before.

The Romney campaign had told the volunteers that Orca was a smartphone “app”, but it was actually a website, and this created confusion when volunteers tried to download the app from the standard locations such as Android Market or iTunes, because it wasn’t available there.

The Orca website was not turned on until 6 AM on Election Day, and thus volunteers didn’t have any time to familiarize themselves with how to use it on their smartphones until that day.

The Orca program was located on a secure https web address, but the developers forgot to redirect the normal http address to the secure one, which meant that when most people went to the standard http address in order to access the program all they got was a blank page, and thus they thought that the system was down.

Orca was never beta tested or checked for functionality in the environment that it would be operating in prior to November 6, but instead it went live for the first time in the Boston Garden arena on Election Day.

The development of the program was rushed, and took place in a very short 7 month time span after the Republican primaries concluded.

The entire system crashed sporadically throughout the day, causing confusion in the Romney campaign because they didn’t know which areas of the country had low voter turnout, and so they had to rely on reports from the media in order to direct their last minute get-out-the-vote efforts. In most of the reports the Romney campaign was described as “flying blind” on Election Day due to the failure of the system and the subsequent lack of reports from the field.

At one point the system went down for a full 90 minutes when the internet connection at the command center was cut off. The Romney campaign initially thought that this was due to a cyber attack, but it later turned out that their internet service provider Comcast had cut their connection off, apparently because the company hadn’t been notified how much data would be going in and out of the Boston Garden arena that day.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of volunteers were unable to use the system because the usernames and passwords they had been assigned were wrong, and the password reset tool did not work.

By 6:00 PM the campaign realized that every volunteer in Colorado and North Carolina had been issued the wrong personal identification number in order to access the system, and efforts to rectify the mistake after that point were only partially successful.

The catastrophic failure of Project Orca on Election Day has led a number of commentators to wonder whether the outcome of the election would have been different if the money and manpower diverted to the project had been used more wisely.

Ekdahl emphasizes this point with a statement towards the end of his account:

So, the end result was that 30,000+ of the most active and fired-up volunteers were wandering around confused and frustrated when they could have been doing anything else to help. Like driving people to the polls, phone-banking, walking door-to-door, etc. We lost by fairly small margins in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. If this had worked could it have closed the gap? I sure hope not for my sanity’s sake.

Joel B. Pollak, the editor-in-chief of the conservative news website Brietbart.com, concluded his piece on Orca by saying that there was

…massive suppression of the Republican vote [on Election Day] –by the Romney campaign [itself], through the diversion of nearly 40,000 volunteers to a failing computer program.

Why Did the Mercury Retrograde Affect Romney?

One of the obvious questions here from an astrological perspective is why did the Mercury retrograde station on Election Day affect the Romney campaign in particular, rather than the Obama campaign?

That the Mercury retrograde would affect Romney more than Obama was actually an observation that the authors of The Political Astrology Blog made back in April when we issued our official prediction, and we also noted it in our article in August on what the Mercury retrograde would mean for the 2012 election:

One of the things that came up during the course of our research for The Political Astrology Blog’s official prediction for the presidential election this year is that this Mercury retrograde seems to be specifically tied into Mitt Romney’s chart.

The chart has Virgo rising, with a Gemini Midheaven, and the Sun and Moon in Gemini, thus making Mercury the primary planet ruling the chart.

What happened here, then, is that Romney launched his campaign at a moment in which Mercury was the most dominant planet, and then on Election Day when Mercury stationed retrograde, the problems associated with that transit became focused on his campaign personally.

I think that this helps to explain how surprised those within the Romney campaign reportedly were when he lost the election that day. Romney himself purportedly hadn’t even written a concession speech ahead of time, in the event that he lost.

One of the reasons for this surprise may have been that the Romney campaign was blindsided by a series of technological snafus that crippled their ground game on Election Day — the type of technological disaster that astrologers who pay attention to Mercury retrograde periods are all too familiar with.

]]>http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/11/14/mercury-retrograde-and-romneys-project-orca/feed/12http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/11/14/mercury-retrograde-and-romneys-project-orca/Obama Wins 2012 Election, As Predictedhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ThePoliticalAstrologyBlog/~3/ElIlFQl41wA/
http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/11/10/obama-wins-2012-election-as-predicted/#commentsSat, 10 Nov 2012 10:57:31 +0000http://politicalastrologyblog.com/?p=6880Barack Obama was re-elected to a second term as President of the United States on November 6, 2012.
In doing so he fulfilled a prediction that the authors of The Political Astrology Blog issued earlier this ...

]]>Barack Obama was re-elected to a second term as President of the United States on November 6, 2012.

In doing so he fulfilled a prediction that the authors of The Political Astrology Blog issued earlier this year in April, where we said that based on our astrological analysis we believed that he would win his bid for re-election in November.

It has been an interesting and exciting election to follow. From the primaries, to the conventions, the debates, and then finally election night itself.

Now that it is all over, we wanted to make a few statements about our prediction in retrospect, although a full postmortem analysis of the election and what we have learned from it will have to wait until later.

The Political Astrology Blog’s Prediction

To summarize, it looks like both candidates will come out of their respective conventions over the summer in very good shape, with each entering into very strong periods astrologically in both of their respective charts.

However, Romney switches into a difficult period starting in mid-October, and this seems to reflect that his campaign will encounter some problems at that time. This difficult period for Romney lasts all the way until early December, and so it appears to reflect that he will lose the election, since Obama encounters nothing comparably difficult during the same time frame.

We have some concerns that the Mercury retrograde on election day could reflect some problems or controversy with the election itself, as it did in 2000, but ultimately based on the considerations outlined above, as well as some that we did not include in this writeup, it is our opinion that Obama will be elected to a second term.

We arrived at our prediction largely by studying the birth charts of the two candidates, and by applying timing techniques to see what parts of their charts would be activated during the course of the election, particularly around Election Day, although we paid attention to other time periods as well.

Prediction of Mid-October Difficulties For Romney

One of the things that made our prediction unique from those issued by other astrologers is that we identified a specific point in the election where, according to our techniques, Romney’s campaign seemed like it would encounter a period of difficulties that would result in the loss of the election.

In our analysis of Romney’s chart in the official prediction article we pointed out that the more difficult period for him would begin on October 13, 2012:

However, on October 13 Romney moves into a Virgo L3 period that lasts until early December, thus encompassing the last few weeks of the election, as well as election night itself and its aftermath. … It is almost as if things are going well in the Romney campaign in the first month and a half following the convention, but then something goes awry from mid-October forward.

Looking at it now in retrospect, it seems that mid-October turned out to be about the point when Romney’s sharp rise in the polls as a result of his success in the first debate came to an end. More interestingly, we may have some external confirmation from an unlikely source that our prediction was correct — New York Times pollster Nate Silver.

Nate Silver’s Analysis Confirms Astrological Prediction

In the past few days after the election ended Nate Silver has been universally hailed for his predictive model, which not only correctly predicted who would win 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 election, but also accurately predicted which candidate would win each of the 50 states in the 2012 election.

On October 31 he published an article on his blog titled Obama’s Electoral College ‘Firewall’ Holding in Polls. You have to read the entire article in order to really understand the significance of it from the perspective of our prediction, but here is one of the more relevant excerpts:

On Oct. 11, this blog posed the question of whether President Obama’s “firewall” in battleground states was all that it was cracked up to be.

…

Mr. Obama had one more terrible day in the polls, on Friday, Oct. 12, when Mr. Romney’s chances of winning the Electoral College rose to almost 40 percent in the forecast. But that was when Mr. Romney’s momentum stopped.

Since then, Mr. Obama’s standing has rebounded slightly. His position in the national polls has stabilized; although the national polls continue to tell a different story about the race than the state polls do; it can no longer be said that they have Mr. Obama behind.

The graph that appeared in the sidebar of Silver’s blog towards the end of the election made the case a bit more dramatically. It shows the probabilities of each candidate winning based on Silver’s meta-analysis of national and state polls:

Note the shift in the graph right around October 13, with the blue line representing Obama and the red line representing Romney.

According to Silver’s meta-analysis, Romney and Obama were growing closer and closer in the polls in early October, and thus Romney’s chance of winning was growing higher, but then October 13 was the point where they started to diverge, with Obama’s chances going up and Romney’s going down. This trend continued, and even accelerated, right through to Election Day.

There weren’t really any major events or scandals in mid-October, so this all seems to be tied in to each candidate’s performance in the debates. And this makes sense, since the polls after the 2nd and 3rd presidential debates seemed to indicate that the general public thought that Obama had won, although the results of the VP debate seemed a bit more mixed at the time.

Of course, after the debates came Hurricane Sandy, which ultimately seemed to help Obama and hurt Romney.

The important point here is that Nate Silver’s meta-analysis appears to provide us with an objective piece of evidence that supports that a crucial part of our prediction was correct — that although Romney would go into mid-October strong, things would go awry beginning around October 13.

A Win for the Astrological Community

We weren’t the only astrologers who correctly predicted that Obama would win.

A panel of five astrologers representing different astrological traditions at the United Astrology Conference in May unanimously predicted that Obama would win the election. Chris Brennan represented the authors of the Political Astrology Blog on the panel, although it is worth noting that there were four other astrologers who used different techniques and traditions, and they also came to the same conclusion.

Additionally, we would also like to point out that, according to the survey of published astrological predictions that we posted on October 29, the vast majority of astrologers who issued public predictions about the election said that Obama would win.

According to our survey of 45 predictions, 31 said that Obama would win, while 14 said that Romney would win. Thus, astrologers were predicting that Obama would win 2 to 1.

Mercury Retrograde Difficulties

Another element of our prediction from April was that there would be some problems surrounding the election due to the Mercury retrograde station that would occur on Election Day.

In our original prediction from April we mentioned this as a side note, saying that we had “some concerns that the Mercury retrograde on election day could reflect some problems or controversy with the election itself, as it did in 2000…” Later in August we expanded on that point in an article titled Mercury Retrograde and the 2012 Election, where we talked about how other elections have turned out when they coincided with Mercury retrograde periods.

Finally, in our roundup of astrological predictions in October we pointed out that most of the astrologers who issued predictions about the election had mentioned the Mercury retrograde, and the general consensus was that it would “coincide with some problems and potentially some delays in the electoral process…”

Ultimately this is an area where the results were more mixed. On the one hand, there clearly were a number of issues that cropped up around the time of the election which created some unique ‘problems and delays’ on Election Day, and yet it did not turn into an exact repeat of the 2000 election, which was a possibility that many astrologers raised.

Obviously the most striking event was the fact that the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, Hurricane Sandy, slammed into the Northeastern United States the week before the election, which caused a number of disruptions and delays for millions of voters in the Northeast states on Election Day.

In New York and New Jersey displaced residents were granted the right to vote anywhere in the state, with New Jersey even allowing ballots to be sent in by email or fax. Issues with the email ballots in New Jersey subsequently caused the deadline for returning them to be extended to Friday, but there were still major issues with the process. ABC News published an article the day after the election titled Email Voting for N.J. Storm Victims Failed, Votes Not Counted Tuesday:

“This is an unprecedented disaster,” Essex County clerk Chris Durkin told the Montclair Times. “People will be disenfranchised because of this unprecedented disaster.”

Election officials around the state were bombarded by requests from voters to vote electronically. Each request took staffers up to 15 minutes to process as they received the email or fax request, checked the voter registration lists for matching identities, and completed paperwork before emailing a ballot to the voter.

In Hudson County, in northern New Jersey, the county clerk had received more than 2,000 requests for email ballots by Tuesday morning, at which point they stopped processing requests altogether.

A big turnout, voting-machine breakdowns and misinformation about voter-eligibility requirements snarled balloting at many polling places Tuesday, forcing Americans to wait as long as five hours to vote.

…

Accusations over voting rights, irregularities and “inexcusable” election planning flew in the key states of Ohio, Virginia and Florida.

Virginia and Florida held polls open until midnight for voters who were in line when the polls were scheduled to close…

In Pennsylvania, complaints poured in of voters being falsely informed of photo-ID requirements that had been set aside by the courts. In Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, dozens and perhaps many more voters’ names were missing from the rolls, creating suspicions of an improper purge of eligible voters’ names.

In Richland County, S.C., Sharon Bruce waited for nearly five hours to vote.

…

Voters across Virginia endured long waits — up to five hours in Chesapeake…

In Pinellas County, Fla., automated phone calls from the supervisor of elections advised more the 12,000 voters that Election Day was Wednesday, before the glitch was corrected.

Obama even mentioned some of the delays that occurred around the country in his acceptance speech on Election Night:

I want to thank every American who participated in this election, whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time. By the way, we have to fix that.

Yet, despite these issues, they do not appear to have been widespread enough to alter the course of the election, and Obama was declared the winner before Election Day was even over.

The only major repeat of the 2000 election occurred in Florida, where long lines and a razor thin margin between the two candidates resulted in a protracted vote tallying period that extended beyond Election Day. Even now, as of early Saturday, November 10, the outcome in Florida still has not been determined.

As many news sources have noted, the debacle in Florida is almost like a repeat of the 2000 election, except that in this case it didn’t matter, because Florida’s electoral votes are not enough to change the outcome of the election.

So were there delays and problems on Election Day? Yes, but ultimately they were not as bad as they could have been, and some of the more dire scenarios envisioned by astrologers and political pundits in the lead up to the election did not come to pass.

Concluding Remarks

We want to wrap this up by thanking our readers for following our coverage throughout the course of the election season. It has been a fun and interesting ride, and we’ve appreciated a lot of the feedback and tips we’ve received along the way.

We would also like to thank some of the astrologers who followed the conventions and the debates with us live, and helped us to take notes about important times.

Finally, we would like to thank those astrologers who were brave enough to “put their money where their mouth is,” and to test their predictive skills by issuing a public prediction about the outcome of the election. Whether you were right or wrong, we believe that the act of prediction is an important part of the process that will allow us to improve and refine the techniques of astrology, and we’ve been able to learn a lot simply by studying the work of our colleagues.

]]>http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/11/10/obama-wins-2012-election-as-predicted/feed/12http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/11/10/obama-wins-2012-election-as-predicted/Live-Blogging the Astrology of Election Day 2012http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ThePoliticalAstrologyBlog/~3/LuwzgVAQ7u0/
http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/11/06/live-blogging-the-astrology-of-election-day-2012/#commentsTue, 06 Nov 2012 11:15:43 +0000http://politicalastrologyblog.com/?p=6757Election Day is finally here! We will be posting live updates on this page throughout the course of the day, as well as on on our Twitter account.
We plan to update this page with some ...

]]>Election Day is finally here! We will be posting live updates on this page throughout the course of the day, as well as on on our Twitter account.

We plan to update this page with some notes about the astrology underlying today’s events, record times when significant developments take place, and post notices about important news stories related to the election.

We will probably begin our coverage sometime in the afternoon, because we will probably be sleeping in, since, let’s face it, most astrologers are anticipating that this is going to be a long night due to the Mercury retrograde, and at the end of it we may not even know who the winner is.

If you come across any important news that you would like to share with us, or if you have any interesting astrological observations about what is going on, then please post them in the comments section below.

Previous Articles on the Astrology of the 2012 Election

We’ve been following the astrology of the 2012 election for a couple of years now, so we have a pretty extensive archive of articles related to the subject at this point. Here are a few of the more important articles that you might want to check out if this is your first time here though:

The Political Astrology Blog’s Official Prediction for the 2012 Election – Back in April the authors of The Political Astrology Blog issued our official prediction for the 2012 presidential election. Based on the techniques that we employed, we predicted that Barack Obama would be reelected to a second term of office. However, we also noted the potential for delays due to the Mercury retrograde on Election Day, which is similar to what happened in 2000.

Mercury Retrograde and the 2012 Election – In August we posted a more extensive discussion about the Mercury retrograde on Election Day, and discussed the implications of what is means by looking at past instances in which it has coincided with elections. We noted that Mercury was also retrograde on Election Day in 1960 and 2000.

Astrologers Predict the 2012 Election: Roundup – This is a roundup of every published prediction about the outcome of the election by astrologers that we could find as of late October. According to our survey of 45 predictions, 31 astrologers predicted that Obama will win, while 14 predicted that Romney would win. Based on that survey, it appears that astrologers are generally predicting that Obama will win 2 to 1.

2:24 PM ET: Moon is currently at 12 Leo 17′. The Moon is currently bonified, separating from Venus and moving toward Jupiter. Moon is rapidly approaching Obama’s Sun at 12 Leo 33′. The Moon was on Romney’s Pluto at 11 Leo 22′ a couple of hours ago.

3:30 PM ET: Astrologer Leisa Schaim alerted us about a federal judge striking down a suit against the Ohio Secretary State for allowing “experimental” software patches to be installed on voting machines days before the general election. Schaim reports: “The story on the Ohio software lawsuit I posted above was published at 11:24 am PST, which is 2:24 pm in Columbus, OH. Assuming a few minute delay from hearing the ruling to posting about it, the chart for 2:20 pm in Columbus has Asc conjunct almost-stationed Neptune and square stationing Mercury overcoming in the 10th. Woo-hoo, that ridiculous Merc-Neptune stationing square highlighted! This lawsuit was filed yesterday about an ‘experimental’ software patch put on electronic voting machines in 39 counties late in the game.” The results of a state hearing are forthcoming.

5:21 PM ET: Astrologer Leisa Schaim alerted us about New Jersey extending its email voting to Friday, read about it here on Politico.

Mercury is now retrograde as of 6:03 PM EST.

Polls close in Virginia at 7:00 PM ET and then at 7:30 Ohio begins to count votes.

7:01 PM ET – Polls just closed in a bunch of states on the east coast, and the news networks are starting to make projections based on exit polls.

7:07 PM ET: ABC News is calling Indiana and Kentucky for Romney based on exit polls, and Vermont for Obama.

8:16 PM ET: Astrologer Leisa Schaim says ACLU of New Jersey tweeted at 7:25 pm Eastern that their emergency legal petition to gain absentee ballots for displaced people complaining about problems with email voting was denied. Here is their full statement from their Facebook page. Mercury retrograde station not a good time to start a new method of tabulating votes…

8:30 PM ET: NBC calls Arkansas for Romney.

Transits for Obama and Romney November 6-7

All times are given in Eastern Standard Time.

Obama

November 6

Moon square Neptune, exact at 07:21 AM

Moon conjunction Sun, exact at 2:55AM

November 7

Mars square Mars, exact at 12:04 AM

Moon opposition Ascendant, exact at 1:21 AM

Venus sextile Sun, exact at 3:41 PM

Moon conjunction Uranus, exact at 2:52 PM

Moon square MC, exact at 9:32 PM

Other transits that are activated for Obama but not exact

Pluto trine Pluto

Nodes square Uranus

Mercury opposing Moon

Pluto sextile Neptune

Neptune trine Venus

Neptune square MC

Saturn square Mercury (1°30′ separating)

Mercury trine Mercury, applying

Jupiter sectile Sun, applying, 2 degrees away

Saturn trine Venus, 2 degrees, separating

Romney

November 6

Moon opposition MC, exact at 03:42AM

Moon opposition Venus, , exact at 07:14 AM

Moon sextile Neptune, exact at 09:55 AM

Moon conjunction Pluto, exact at 12:39 PM

Venus sextile Pluto, exact at 16:28 PM

November 7

Moon sextile Uranus, exact at 12:59 AM

Moon square Jupiter, exact at 7:05 PM

Moon square Moon, exact at 7:12 PM

Other transits that are activated for Romney but not exact

Jupiter square Mercury

Neptune square Ascendant

Sun trine Mercury

Mercury conjunct south node

Mars square Sun (1 degree separating)

Pluto sextile Mars

North node conjunct Jupiter

Saturn square Saturn

North node conjunct Moon

Uranus sextile MC

Venus conjunct Neptune (1 degree 50 separating)

Mercury trine Saturn (1 degree 50 applying)

Mercury square Mars (1 degree 56 separating)

Resuming Live Updates at 8:45 PM ET

A bunch of the mountain states have their polls closing in about 15 minutes, at 9:00 PM ET.

9:00 PM ET: NBC says Colorado and Arizona too close to call. Wisconsin and Nebraska too early to call. Romney gets Texas, Mississippi, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Wyoming, North and South Dakota. Obama gets New York, New Mexico, and Michigan.

9:19 PM ET – Reader Chris Dingley sent us a tip saying that he hears that Wisconsin is running out of ballots, which is kind of a Mercury retrograde issue. He originally heard it on MSNBC, but it is also being reported on Talking Points Memo right now as well.

9:21 PM ET – Florida keeps going back and forth. There was a report around 9:15 that Florida had 80 percent of precincts reporting, and Obama was in the lead by only 193 votes. That is a really close margin. But now at 9:21 NBC has reported that the margin has opened back up, with Romney leading by 12,000 votes after another precinct reported in.

9:28 PM ET – NBC calls Wisconsin for Obama.

9:32 PM ET – Reports are coming in that people are still standing in line at the polls in Florida, and there are estimates that they will continue to be for another 2 hours or so. This is important because Florida is really close right now, and it has a lot of electoral votes.

Resuming Live Updates at 9:45 PM ET

9:43 PM ET – NBC just called the Massachusetts senate race for Elizabeth Warren. The first reports that she won seems like they started coming in at 9:10 though. K.S. Roy points out in the comments section below that “Elizabeth Warren’s FB page posted a “thank you” message at 9:09 PM EST.” Link to Facebook post.

9:57 PM ET – A reporter from NBC in Miami Ohio said that it “may not be until the end of the month” before we know the outcome in Florida Ohio , since it is so close there right now, and because they wouldn’t start counting the provisional ballots until later in the month. (We think the reporter was in Florida, although one of our astrologers thought they said Ohio.) Update: turns out he was in Ohio. The issue is provisional ballots in Ohio.

10:01 PM ET – NBC just called Utah and Montana for Romney.

10:07 PM ET – Claire McCaskill was just projected as the winner of senate race against Todd Akin by a pretty large margin.

10:17 PM ET – The New York Times tweets “News of close Florida race keeps mood up at Romney’s party in Boston.”

10:25 PM ET – NBC reporting: Iowa too early to call, Nevada too early, Colorado too close to call, Virginia still too close to call after 3 hours. North Carolina still too close to call. Ohio too close to call. Florida too close to call.

11:19 PM ET – Fox News was also calling it around the same time. CNN delayed, but now they have called it as well. Where is the retrograde?

11:22 PM ET – ABC News still hasn’t called it yet. New York Times hasn’t either. Astrologers wonder if there could still be a Mercury retrograde reversal, or if this is really it.

11:33 PM ET - On NBC they just read a statement from a Romney adviser saying that it isn’t over yet, as they are still waiting for all of the votes to come in.

11:35 PM ET – ABC News and the Associated Press are now calling it for Obama. The New York Times is reporting it as “Networks Project Second Term for Obama”, apparently trying to be careful about calling themselves.

11:40 PM ET – Romney campaign is definitely saying that they are not conceding Ohio yet.

11:43 PM ET – NBC reporting that Obama is ahead in the popular vote, although just barely.

11:46 PM ET – Marc Ambinder tweets “Senior Obama official says there has been NO concession call yet from Romney.”

11:48 PM ET – Associated Press now calling Colorado for Obama.

11:54 PM ET – ABC News projects Obama will win Nevada

11:58 PM ET – Nate Silver of The New York Times writes an update: “Some networks have called the Electoral College for Barack Obama, but it will take longer before the popular vote can officially be called. That’s because the three Pacific Coast states — California, Oregon and Washington — conduct much of their voting by mail, yielding a lag of several days to a week before all ballots are counted. As of 11:45 p.m., however, Mr. Obama trailed Mitt Romney by only about 150,000 votes nationally, a margin he should be able to make up on the West Coast.” Link

12:16 AM ET – Still no concession from Romney. Patrick Watson points out that it is kind of holding everything up, because until that happens Obama can’t make his victory speech yet. We are wondering if this isn’t the Mercury retrograde issue, although we will have to see how long this drags on tonight before we know for sure.

12:21 AM EST: Brad Friedman reporting Cuyahoga County, Ohio election results website is down. This is important because it is one of the counties in Ohio where the votes are not in yet, and the networks are assuming will go for Obama. Link to tweets.

12:27 AM EST: Reader Anita points out in a comment below a news report saying that the final election results in Florida’s Miami-Dade County county will be delayed until Wednesday: “Final election results from Florida’s Miami-Dade County, which accounts for about 10 percent of the crucial swing state’s registered voters, will not be available until Wednesday afternoon, a senior election official announced late on Tuesday.” Link.

12:33 AM ET – The Associated Press is saying that Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin has won her bid for the Senate, making her the first openly gay Senator.

12:34 AM ET – NBC News is reporting that Obama has pulled into the lead in the popular vote now that the California votes are starting to come in.

2:47 AM ET: We are working on our official ‘we called it’ post right now. Will probably post it either in the next few hours or sometime tomorrow. Unless something else comes out of nowhere tonight I think that this concludes our live blogging coverage of Election Day 2012. Thanks for joining us!

]]>http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/11/06/live-blogging-the-astrology-of-election-day-2012/feed/18http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/11/06/live-blogging-the-astrology-of-election-day-2012/Astrologers Predict the 2012 Election: Rounduphttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ThePoliticalAstrologyBlog/~3/OyZ1bWMqBrA/
http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/10/29/astrologers-predict-the-2012-election-roundup/#commentsMon, 29 Oct 2012 19:47:24 +0000http://politicalastrologyblog.com/?p=5959The purpose of this article is to give a roundup of predictions that have been made by astrologers about the outcome of the 2012 presidential election in the United States.
The authors of The Political Astrology ...

This isn’t just a tally of predictions for Obama or Romney though; instead, I would also like to focus on which techniques each astrologer employed when making their prediction.

The purpose of this exercise is so that we can go back after the election and have a discussion within the astrological community about which techniques worked, and which ones didn’t.

Ultimately astrology is a technical study that involves interpretation and inference. No one has a crystal ball that tells them exactly what will happen in the future, but we do have techniques that can be very good at forecasting things, and this does enable astrologers to know things about the future that they shouldn’t otherwise be able to know.

Predicting events with astrology is not an easy task, though, and it should be clear from the outset that the purpose of this list is not to shame those who turn out to be incorrect after the fact. Rather, the purpose is to review which techniques are being employed to make these predictions, and hopefully this will help us to refine and sharpen some of our techniques in the future.

Ranking the Predictions

The predictions below were culled together from a variety of sources. The majority of them were taken from astrology blogs and websites around the internet, while some were cited from public lectures, interviews, or print publications.

The quality of the predictions differ from astrologer to astrologer and prediction to prediction. For example, some are very long and detailed, while others are very short and simple. Some were presented by relatively big name astrologers, while others on the list are somewhat more obscure. There is also a wide variation in the approaches that each astrologer takes, depending on the tradition of astrology that they specialize in, as well as the techniques that they chose to employ.

As a result of these variations, I tried to develop a loose system for ranking the predictions. This was kind of a difficult task, and I ended up applying several different considerations in the process.

Here are some of the factors that I took into account in ranking the predictions:

The prominence of the prediction in the mainstream media, either by being featured or cited in a news story or interview.

The prominence of the prediction in the astrological community, either by being featured in an astrological publication or at an astrological venue, such as at a conference.

How eminent or well-known the astrologer is who made the prediction, either inside or outside of the astrological community.

How standard their techniques are, versus using non-standard techniques that are unique to the astrologer.

How thoroughly the astrologer appears to have researched their prediction.

How far in advance the prediction was issued prior to Election Day.

How detailed the writeup for the prediction is, and how much of the research they based it on is shared.

How clearly they stated their prediction, as opposed to either being unclear or hedging.

How neutral or non-partisan the astrologer appears to be in making their prediction.

This last point about being non-partisan is important, because there were at least two predictions that I did not include in this roundup because the authors exhibited a conspicuous level of partisanship, and I felt that this called into question their ability to make a neutral prediction based on the astrology. One of the predictions I excluded was for Obama, while the other was for Romney.

One last point that needs to be made here is that the ease with which people can set up websites nowadays means that having a Web presence doesn’t necessarily correlate with one’s training or expertise. In some ways this roundup is largely a survey of those astrologers who have blogs or websites, because they have the ability to make their predictions known.

I’m sure that there were many good astrologers who did work on this election whose predictions were either not published or which I did not find in the process of researching this article though. Nonetheless, I tried to be reasonably comprehensive in compiling this list, and I believe that it accurately reflects the general consensus amongst astrologers about the outcome of the election.

Astrologers Who Predicted That Obama Will Win

The following list contains astrologers who predicted that Barack Obama will be reelected to a second term of office as a result of the 2012 presidential election.

Chris Brennan and Patrick Watson (Denver & Phoenix) – The authors of The Political Astrology Blog. Employed a mixture of Hellenistic and modern western astrology. Primarily natal astrology, studying the birth charts of Obama and Romney, and using the Hellenistic time-lord technique called Zodiacal Releasing, as well as transits. Said that both candidates go into important “peak periods” in the summer prior to the election, but that Romney begins a more difficult subperiod starting in mid-October, right before the second debate, ultimately resulting in the loss of the election in November. Later employed inception charts for the moment that each candidate accepted their nominations at the conventions, which confirmed the earlier prediction. Their official prediction was published on The Political Astrology Blog on April 29, 2012, titled Prediction for the 2012 US Presidential Election. The prediction was cited in an ABC news article on May 7, and then again in a live Fox News interview on Fox and Friends on May 8. The prediction was later presented by Brennan on the UAC presidential panel on May 29, which was then cited by Reuters and USA Today in articles later on the same day. Brennan also predicted an Obama win in the June/July 2012 issue of The Mountain Astrologer Magazine (pg. 80), which was released in early May 2012. In this article, which was on Hellenistic timing techniques, he noted indications for a career change in Obama’s chart in 2017, which would coincide with the end of his second term.

Nina Gryphon (Chicago, Illinois) – Medieval and Renaissance mundane astrology. Did a 132 year study of Aries ingress charts for election years, and then applied the same technique to 2012. Focuses on the 10th and 4th houses for the party in power and the opponent, respectively. Conjunctions to cusps of those houses, then condition of rulers of those houses. Application of Obama’s significator to exalted Sun indicates victory. Romney’s significator makes no applying aspects, which is seen as negative. Prediction originally published as Forecast: U.S. Presidential Election 2012, Gryphon Astrology Blog (website), March 17, 2012. Later presented on UAC presidential panel May 29, 2012. Cited by Reuters May 29. Interviewed live on CNN’s Headline News on May 30. Cited again later in an article on ABC News’ website on September 24, 2012.

Edith Hathaway (La Jolla, California) – Vedic (Indian) astrology. Correctly predicted an Obama win on the 2008 UAC presidential panel. First predicted Obama’s re-election in an Oct. 2010 lecture in India, noting spring 2012 through spring 2016 in the 60-year Jupiter cycle (Jovian years). Prefers a rectified time of 6:10 AM for Obama, with sidereal Cancer rising rather than sidereal Capricorn (birth certificate), although she also pays attention to both charts. Analysis of candidates’ natal placements for eminence; timing from Vimshottari dasha system and transits. Romney in Sun dasha, Mercury sub-period – strong due to 10th house placements natally, but nakshatra lords not favorable. Obama in a favorable Jupiter dasha with Cancer rising chart, although even with the official chart Obama still wins due to Saturn dasha from late July 2012. (Saturn becomes ascendant lord.) Also says Obama has more connections to the U.S. chart. Presented on UAC presidential panel on May 29, 2012. Some of her methodology also discussed in an article on her website: Election Update 2012 (PDF), posted October 16, 2012.

Gary Christen (Brewster, Massachusetts) – Symmetrical astrology and Uranian astrology. Focuses on the chart for the oath of office on Inauguration Day. Uses the Capricorn ingress chart prior to inauguration, inserting candidate’s Sun placements and then directing them to the inauguration date. Employs transneptunians from Uranian astrology, as well as planetary pictures. Focuses on transits by transneptunians on Inauguration Day. Presented on UAC presidential panel on May 29, 2012.

Claude Weiss (Switzerland) – Modern western astrology. Specializes in mundane and financial astrology. In his prediction he uses natal charts of candidates, US chart, transits, eclipses, secondary and converse progressions, solar returns, and a unique system of progressions applied to the solar return charts (keep the time of the solar return, but use the date of the election). Says Jupiter transits through Romney’s 1st house is positive, and also eclipse in May 2012 in Romney’s 1st. Solar arcs between US chart and Obama more favorable though. Obama solar arc MC opposite solar return Moon (?). Presented on UAC presidential panel on May 29, 2012.

Bernadette Brady & Darrelyn Gunzberg (Bristol, UK) – Ancient Mesopotamian mundane and visual astrology, specifically focusing on the phases of Venus. Brady is highly regarded in the astrological community, and she has been given two of its most prestigious awards. In a newsletter in September 2008 Brady and Gunzberg predicted that the party who won the election that year in the US would also win the 2012 election, and they then reaffirmed their prediction in a newsletter in January 2012, saying that “Venus indicates Obama’s return to the White House.” The focal point of their argument is the fact that Venus will be a morning star on Election Day, which means that it will rise before the Sun. They point out that there have only been two US elections since 1900 where the incumbent lost under a morning star Venus phase. The Visual Astrology Newsletter, Zentara Publications (website), September 2008.

Dennis Flaherty (Seattle, Washington) – Well-regarded practitioner of Vedic astrology. Current president of the Council of Vedic Astrologers (CVA). Focuses on the Vimshottari dasha system, with Romney in Sun dasha with Sun in 10th, and Obama in Saturn dasha with Sun in the 1st. Also focuses on the transiting position of each candidate’s dasha lord on Election Day. The Sun will be in sidereal Libra, which is weak and thus bad for Romney, while Saturn will also be in Libra, where it is exalted, and thus good for Obama. Vedic Astrology Predictions for Fall and Winter 2012, VedicSciences.com (website), September 2012.

Lee Lehman (Asheville, North Carolina) – Specializes in Renaissance astrology. Regarded as one of the leading practitioners of traditional astrology. Prediction given in a lecture on August 14, 2012 for the Northern Illinois chapter of the NCGR titled “Modeling Presidential Elections.” Did a comparative historical examination of 16 paired candidates’ birth charts where the data was B or better, and employed a point system based on Bonatti’s rules for war, applying it to: (1) the Aries Ingress, (2) the Libra Ingress, (3) Election day midnight, (4) election day dawn, (5) the prior Mars-Saturn conjunction, (6) the prior Mars-Jupiter conjunction, (7) the prior syzygy, (8) the Electoral College day noon, and (9) Inauguration Day noon.

Alan Oken (Seattle, Washington) – Modern western and esoteric astrology. He outlines his methodology very clearly in the beginning, saying that he is going to focus on the natal charts of the two candidates, and then compare their transits and secondary progressions for Election Day and Inauguration Day. Interestingly, he uses 6:00 pm Honolulu for Election Day because this is when the last poll closes. Focuses on aspects that are within a degree. He sees transiting Mars in Sagittarius completing a T-square with Romney’s natal Sun and Uranus in the last week of the election as being particularly detrimental. The clincher for him are Obama’s transits on Inauguration Day, especially Sun conjunct Jupiter at the MC for Obama, versus Romney’s less favorable transiting Sun and Mercury opposing natal Saturn. Alan Oken’s Monthly Newsletter, Scorpio 2012, www.alanoken.com (website), October 21, 2012.

Ray Merriman (Bloomfield, Michigan) – Financial astrologer, and former president of the International Society for Astrological Research (ISAR). Says that the Uranus-Pluto square could indicate change in the White House, but thinks that the majority of astrological signatures favor Obama. Says the Moon in Leo on Election Day argues for Obama, whose Sun is in Leo, like Moon in Cancer on Election Day in 2004 favored Bush, whose Sun is in Cancer. MMA Comments for the Week Beginning October 8, 2012, Merriman Market Analyst (website), October 8, 2012. He says in this article that he originally predicted an Obama win in his “Forecast 2012 Book”, which was published in December 2011.

Adrian Duncan (Aalborg, Denmark) – Modern western astrology. Semi well-known astrologer due to a book he published in 2002, as well as an astrology software program he designed. Uses a rectified time of 9:42 AM for Romney, which gives him Taurus rising instead of Gemini rising. Transits and progressions for election day. Leans towards an Obama win, saying that Obama’s chart resonates more with the US chart. The Future of America, astrology69.wordpress.com (blog), August 16, 2012.

Arlene Marcia Nimark (New York, NY) – Uranian astrology. Predicted Bush’s re-election in 2004. Transneptunians, cardinal axis, midpoints, planetary pictures. Focuses on solar arcs and transits for election day and inauguration day. Prediction originally published in the September/October 2012 issue of the NCGR Newsletter (pgs. 13-15), which was emailed October 2, 2012. The article was also posted on Arlene’s website: The Next President of the United States Is?, Arlene Nimark Uranian Astrologer (website), October 2012.

Col. AK Gour (India) – Vedic astrology. Focuses on 9th house and ruler for luck, navamsha chart, dashas and transits, and the Mercury retrograde on election day. His analysis is too complex to summarize here, but he uses the Vimshottari and Char dasha systems, and like other practitioners of Indian astrology he notes that the Raja Yoga of Sun-Mercury is now unlocked by the Sun-Mercury dasha in Romney’s chart. Like the others though, he says that Obama’s Saturn dasha and transits win out. US Presidential Elections: Obama or Romney, Journal of Astrology (website), September 27, 2012.

Larry Schwimmer (San Francisco, California) – Wrote a two-part series on the election and the charts of the candidates for The Huffington Post. Talks a lot about personality traits and some timing prior to Election Day, but doesn’t discuss the astrological rationale, so there isn’t much to summarize here. However, at one point in his article he does say that “Historically, the planet Pluto has been a major factor in forecasting the winner for presidential elections,” and he goes on to explain that he sees Obama’s Pluto trine Pluto transit around the time of the election as one of the more favorable factors in indicating his reelection. He also talks briefly about the VP candidates, especially Ryan. Astrology: The Obama-Biden Ticket – Winners or Losers, The Huffington Post, September 5, 2012.

Maxine Taylor (Atlanta, Georgia) – Modern western astrology. Has the distinction of being the first publicly licensed astrologer in the state of Georgia in 1968. She was also CNN’s on-air astrologer in the 1980s. Primarily focuses on using diurnal charts, although she also takes into account the natal chart, transits and progressions. The emphasis of her technique is to focus on conjunctions to the cusps of the houses, and especially the four angles, in the diurnal chart from transiting and progressed planets. Says that Obama has natal Pluto on the cusp of the 4th in the diurnal for November 5, and then progressed Pluto on the 4th cusp on Nov 6, which she says is a repetition of 2008. Venus conjunct ascendant Nov 5. Progressed Moon on 11th cusp. Says that Romney shows now angular activity on Election Day, but just 8th house placements, like Saturn on 8th house cusp on Nov 5, and North Node on 6th cusp. For Inauguration Day Obama’s diurnal shows transiting South Node on cusp of 10th, and natal north node on asc, whereas Romney again has no cusps activated. The 2012 Presidential Race Astrologically Speaking, New Era Times (website), September 18, 2012 (originally sent out via private mailing list).

Lakshmi Parthasarathy (India) – Vedic astrology. Focuses on the strength or weakness of natal placements, with particular attention to eminence indicators. Also focuses on Vimshottari dasha periods and a few transits on election day for timing. She considers the natal chart of a President to be representative of what will happen in the country during their term in office. Entering the Saturn dasha period in the summer indicates victory for Obama because Saturn is very well-placed as ruler of the ascendant. Prediction published online as Election 2012 – Vedic Astrological Perspective, Fate Magazine (magazine/blog), August 15, 2012.

Kathryn Silverton (Lilburn, Georgia) – Author of “In the Stars” horoscope column for United Airlines’ in-flight magazine Hemispheres. Employs transits, secondary progressions and solar arc directions to natal charts of candidates, focusing on Election Day and Inauguration Day. Also looks at Obama’s chart for Inauguration Day 2017, since his second term would end then. Notes some positive things in Romney’s chart like transiting north node conjunct his Moon-Jupiter conjunction, but views other things like secondary progressed Moon in the 12th and transiting Saturn square natal Saturn and MC as being negative. Notes some positive things on Inauguration Day, but suggests that there aren’t enough to indicate an “elevation in status.” Why Barack Obama will be a two-term president, In the Stars with Kathryn Silverton (website), March (?) 2012.

Christopher Kevill (Toronto, Canada) – Vedic astrology, with some modern western techniques. Vimshottari dasha system, secondary and tertiary progressions, and transits. Obama’s Saturn dasha begins in June or July depending on ayanamsha. Notes that Saturn is very well placed as ascendant lord in its own sign (Capricorn) with Jupiter and opposite Mercury. Saturn ingress into sidereal Libra in August favorable. Transits on election day are mostly good: Jupiter trine ascendant, Jupiter trine relocated MC in Washington, transiting Rahu conj MC. Romney is in Sun-Mercury dasha. Both planets well-placed in the 10th, but Mercury retrograde natally, conjunct Mars, lord of 12th house of loss. Neither dasha lord receives favorable transit on election day. Instead, negative transit of Mars square Sun. US Presidential Election 2012: Obama’s Saturn vs. Romney’s Sun, Modern Vedic Astrology (website), June 4, 2012.

Ron Berger (Hollywood, California) – Vedic astrology. Analysis of natal charts of candidates. Says that Raja Yoga between Sun and Mercury is spoiled due to presence of Mars, who is ruler of 12th and 7th. This is problematic because Romney is in Sun-Mercury dasha during election, which would otherwise be very good. Points to problematic transits around election day like Ketu transiting the Ascendant, and Mars the 7th. For Obama the new Saturn dasha that begins in July is positive because Saturn is well placed, and then transiting Saturn’s ingress into his 10th indicates success because it is ruler of the ascendant and dasha lord. Astrology for Mitt Romney Versus Barack Obama 2012, LivingSkillfully.com (website), May 15, 2012.

Nancy Sommers (Kensington, Maryland) – Modern western astrology. Mainly transits to the natal charts of each candidate, with some secondary progressions. “President Obama’s chart suggests that he will be far more contented, satisfied, and beloved than Governor Romney as the year 2012 winds down and 2013 begins. This would seem to indicate his success in the election.” Presidential Challenges, Starlight News (blog), April 22, 2012.

Jagdish Maheshri (Houston, Texas) – A blend of Vedic astrology and modern western astrology, using the sidereal zodiac with Placidus houses and the outer planets. Emphasis on navamsha chart. Some form of progressions for Election Day. Says that Obama has a slight edge in natal and progressed placements, but they are even in the transits. Gives a narrow victory to Obama due to progressions. 2012 US Presidential Election Prediction, Astro Insight (website), August 31, 2012.

Paul Saunders (London, UK) – Modern western astrology. Gives largely psychological delineations of natal placements. Looks at synastry between the candidates, then transits to both natal charts on Election Day, as well as the progressed Moon. Cites some things from Bernadette Brady’s approach to “Visual Astrology,” such as Venus’s phase and certain fixed stars. Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney – Who does astrology say will win the 2012 US Presidential Election?, Solaris Astrology (blog), May 8, 2012.

Carole Devine (Portsmouth, Virginia) Modern western astrology. Transits, secondary progressions, solar arcs, and tertiary progressions to the natal charts of the candidates. The Election, Devine Observations (blog), September 15, 2012.

Curtis Manwaring (Henderson, Nevada) – Mainly Hellenistic time-lord techniques, especially Zodiacal Releasing, with some annual profections. He is known as the programmer of a software program for Hellenistic astrology, and he authored the first program to calculate Zodiacal Releasing periods 17 years ago. Argues that Obama’s chart makes more sense if you employ the diurnal calculations for the Lots of Fortune and Spirit, even though Obama has a night chart. He invokes a rule mentioned by Vettius Valens where the diurnal formula should be used for Fortune when the Moon is below the horizon at night. He hedges a bit at the end, but says that he thinks that Obama will win a second term, citing the repetition of a difficult period from Romney’s past in November, and pointing out that that Obama hits a level 4 peak period in Inauguration Day. Election 2012 – Obama vs Romney and Beyond, www.astrology-x-files.com (website), May 6, 2012.

Dharmaruci (Devon, UK) – Modern western astrology. He thinks that transiting North Node conjunct Obama’s MC in November 2012 is similar to North Node conjunct his ASC in 2008. Thinks that he will stay in office until Neptune is finished with hard aspects to ASC, MC and Moon, under the premise that leaders are usually elected under hard outer planet transits, and then stay in office until those transits are over. The US Election and a Warning for Obama, AstroTableTalk (blog), January 9, 2012.

Joseph Crane (Saunderstown, Rhode Island) – Mixture of Hellenistic and modern western astrology. Transits, progressions, solar returns, synastry between the candidates, and some Hellenistic time-lord techniques (decennials, circumambulations, and releasing from Fortune and Spirit). Some of the measurements he looks at seem to favor Obama, while he says that others favor Romney. For example, he points out that Obama’s relocated solar return for Washington, DC has Venus and Jupiter auspiciously placed in the 10th whole sign house, but then points out that Romney has a favorable Venus-Jupiter conjunction in his solar return as well, in Taurus in the 4th whole sign house. Ultimately he does say that Obama will take the electoral college, although his technical analysis doesn’t appear to strongly favor either candidate, and in most instances the indications are either balanced or cancel each other out, according to Crane. Astrology Institute Newsletter, www.astrologyinstitute.com (website), September 2012.

Anthony Louis (Connecticut) – Applies an experimental method of trying to determine which candidate will take each of the swing states by comparing their natal charts to the inception charts of the states themselves (as derived from Marc Penfield’s data collection Horoscopes of the Western Hemisphere), and then determining which candidate is more compatible according to a point system that involves the number and type of synastry aspects between the charts. He doesn’t show his work for every state, so his conclusions can’t be examined. He says that the method predicts Obama winning the election with 281 electoral votes, compared to 257 for Romney. Updated prediction of U.S. Presidential Election 2012, tonylouis.wordpress.com (blog), October 21, 2012.

Sam “Sadasiva” Geppi (San Francisco, California) – Vedic astrology. Calls it for Obama, although he kind of hedges a lot, saying that it is very close. At the beginning he says “As I have said from the beginning, either one of them could win.” His conclusion: “Having said that, my feeling is Obama’s exalted Saturn (his dasa lord and ruling planet) in the 10th House will take the day. However, Romney is also running the secondary dasa of a planet that is forming a Raja Yoga on election day (Mercury).” Vedic Astrology Election Prediction From Sam Geppi, mydailyastrology.net (website), October 23, 2012. Most of the actual delineation is in a 34 minute screen cast on YouTube.

Sat Siri Khalsa (Santa Cruz, New Mexico) – Vedic astrology. Current Vice President of the Council of Vedic Astrology. Uses the natal charts of the two candidates. Focuses on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level Vimshottari dasha lords of each candidate around Election Day. Uses 3rd, 9th and 10th harmonic divisional charts as well as other factors in order to study the placement of the dasha lords. Starts the Vimshottari dasha periods from the Ascendant rather than the Moon for Obama, saying that it is stronger for him due to having two planets there. Studies chart for when polls open at 7:00 AM in Washington, DC on Election Day. Ultimately assigns Saturn to the Democrats and Jupiter to the Republicans. Jupiter’s retrograde status and other factors compared to Saturn’s favorable position indicates that the Democrats win. US Election 2012, satsirikhalsa.com, October 29, 2012.

Gar Osten (Newton, Iowa) – In his 1976 book The Astrological Chart of the United States, from 1776 to 2141 he wrote that the year 2012 would see the “re-election of the incumbent president.” This was based on applying secondary progressions to the US chart, using the Gemini rising variant (July 4 1776 at 3:01 AM in Philadelphia, PA). Osten died in 1991. This prediction was brought to my attention by an astrologer from New York who wrote a blog post on it. Gar Osten, The Astrological Chart of the United States from 1776 to 2141, Stein and Day, New York, NY, 1976, pg. 252.

Special thanks to Edith Hathaway for her help in collecting predictions by Vedic astrologers.

Astrologers Who Predicted That Romney Will Win

The following list contains astrologers who predicted that Mitt Romney will win the 2012 presidential election. Of the 14 predictions, 7 were published very recently in October. The October predictions are ranked by the order in which they were released.

Michael “Wolfstar” O’Reilly (Bend, Oregon) – Modern western astrology. His prediction was the cover story in the November 2012 issue of Dell Horoscope, which is one of the more highly circulated popular astrology magazines (see the image to the right for the cover). Some excerpts from the article were published on his website, Neptunecafe.com. He focuses mainly on transits and secondary progressions to each candidate’s natal chart on Election Day and Inauguration Day. He also looks at the chart of the US, using the Scorpio rising chart, although he acknowledges that this chart “remains controversial” amongst astrologers. He says that transiting Saturn moving into the Scorpio ascendant of the US chart indicates a shift towards conservatism, and thus the conservative candidate winning. He pays particular attention the Midheaven and Pluto in the natal charts of the candidates, and he sees Romney’s progressed Pluto trine his natal Midheaven on Election Day as particularly auspicious, while the lack of progressions to Obama’s Midheaven on Inauguration Day is negative. He also cites a number of other factors of lesser importance, which are too numerous to cite here. He essentially concludes his piece by accusing those who predicted an Obama win of being biased, and turning “…a blind eye to a possible Republican win.” Citation: “Who Will Win?”, Dell Horoscope (magazine), November 2012 issue (was on the newsstands by September 2012), pgs. 6-12.

Bill Meridian (New York, NY) – Mainly known as a financial astrologer. Employs modern natal astrology in his delineation, as well as inception charts for the Democratic and Republican parties. Progressions, eclipses, stations, solar arcs. A few transneptunians from Uranian astrology. Had an excellent hit already in his article where he predicted that Romney would have a major boost in his popularity just after the first debate due to the Jupiter station conjunct his natal Uranus in the 1st: “Beginning with the October 4 Jupiter station, we see that it is closely conjunct his natal Uranus. This will likely boost his popularity as the election approaches.” (pg. 14) “November’s Planets and You”, Dell Horoscope (magazine), November 2012 issue (published September 2012), pgs. 13-15.

Madam Charlene Lichtenstein (New York, NY) – Modern western astrology. In her blog article she looks at the transits to the composite chart of Obama/Biden and Romney/Ryan on Election Day, although ultimately the main emphasis of her prediction rests on the fact that Obama was nominated at the DNC in September under a void of course Moon: “…the nomination and acceptance of the nomination during the Void of Course moon is the clincher for me to call the election for the Republicans.” According to Astrology, The Next US President Will Be …, Madam Lichtenstein’s Cosmic World (blog), September 10, 2012.

Ema Kurent (Ljubljana, Slovenia) – Modern western astrology. Primarily focuses on eclipses, especially the prenatal and postnatal eclipses of the candidates, as well as the eclipses in May and November 2012. She sees the May eclipse in Gemini on Romney’s ascendant as being extremely important and auspicious, while she considers the eclipses in Obama’s 10th house/4th house axis to indicate changes at work and at home, and thus his leaving the White House. Also looks at secondary progressions, transits, and the chart of the Republican party. She hedges a bit at the end, saying “this is not a straight prediction” as the “indications are mixed”, and thus the purpose of her article is primarily meant to be educational in nature. Nonetheless, she says that she “wouldn’t be surprised if he [Romney] won the election.” Prediction published in the August 2012 issue of the ISAR Journal, Vol. 41 #2, the digital version of which was sent out via email on August 16, 2012. Also published on her website under the title Who Wins the 2012 USA Presidential Election?

Jaime Partridge (Woolgoolga, Australia) – Modern western astrology. Only discusses Romney’s chart in the article where he makes his main prediction, although discusses Obama’s elsewhere. Used natal chart, transits, eclipses, secondary progressions, solar return (relocated and corrected for precession), and some fixed stars. Towards the end of his delineation he says that Romney’s progressed Moon conjunct his progressed Midheaven on Election Day “means a high and favorable public profile with the ability to come across as emphatic to the needs of the public and especially women. In tune and intuitive about the public mood.” Mitt Romney Horoscope, Darkstar Astrology (blog), May 8, 2012.

Maria Rinehart (Gainesville, Florida) – Financial astrologer who uses modern western astrology. Looks at natal charts of the candidates and points out some notable transits, progressions. She contrasts some progressions and transits for Romney that she says seem more “publicly oriented” with some for Obama that seem “more personal.” Progressed Moon conjunct MC for Romney, versus progressed Moon conjunct Ascendant for Obama. Contrasts transiting Jupiter in Gemini in Romney’s 1st versus Obama’s 4th. Not a strong endorsement, but she does conclude by saying that “the astrological picture indicates Romney may be able to overcome his relatability issues, tip the balance in his favor by bringing the 40-somthings to his camp and, in turn, be elected president.” Mitt Romney the Next US President?, www.mariarinehart.com (website), early August (?) 2012.

Alex Miller (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) – Modern western astrologer who uses some standard techniques like natal charts, transits, progressions, and solar returns, but also uses several non-standard things like black holes, quasars, and a lot of asteroids. The integration of these non-standard factors makes his delineation kind of unconventional. There are too many factors mentioned in his analysis to summarize here. Prediction published in a 2 part series, with the second containing the final prediction: Election Preview II: The Case for Romney, Daykeeper Journal (blog), October 1, 2012.

Doug Walker (California)- Modern western astrology. Blogger who usually writes about planetary cycles and history. He focused on major configurations in the birth charts, synastry between candidates, Saturn cycles, and the Mercury retrograde on election day as a transit in each candidate’s chart. Emphasizes Romney’s first quarter Saturn square that is close to exact on election day, saying that when this transit occurs “you see these people rise to levels they never previously achieved,” but warns that “if this is not what he [Romney] is supposed to be doing, he will crash and burn here.” He sees the Mercury retrograde over Obama’s Midheaven around election day as indicating a reversal, or at least a “very difficult time in matters of career.” Who will win the 2012 Election? President Obama or Governor Romney?, The History of Astrology (blog), October 13, 2012.

David Hernandez (Miami, Florida) – Medieval astrology. Correctly predicted the 2008 US presidential election on his blog. Applies Medieval rules for war from Bonatti to inception chart for the “start” of the election, using midnight on November 6, 2012 at Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. Assigns Romney to the 1st house and Obama to the 7th. Also uses distance between Lot of Fortune and Exaltation to determine length of Obama’s reign based on natal chart, which he says comes out to about 3 years. The Demise of the Presidency 2012, Imprimatur Stellarum (blog), October 15, 2012.

William Stickevers (New York, NY) – Uses what he calls “mundane political contest horary,” in which he asks himself a question related to the election and then casts a chart for the moment of the question. Has cast multiple horary charts regarding who would win the electoral votes of certain states in the past year, as well as other matters related to the election, such who would win certain debates, posting the results either on his blog or his Facebook page. As of October 29, 2012 no final prediction about the outcome of the election has been published on his blog, although he gave a lecture at the Astrological Society of Connecticut on Thursday, October 18, 2012 in which he predicted that Romney would win, and this is consistent with several predictions he made publicly on Facebook in the months leading up the election.

Christina Rodenbeck (Oxford, UK) – Only employs solar arcs. Directing the US Sibley chart by solar arc, and comparing it to Romney’s current solar arc placements, especially the Sibley SA Midheaven to Romney’s SA Sun. Says that there is nothing comparable in Obama’s chart at the moment. Acknowledges that this all depends on the Sibley chart being correct, especially the time, since she focuses on the MC, although the correct chart for the US is a highly debated topic. Putting My Foot In the US Election, The Oxford Astrologer (blog), October 19, 2012.

David Goldstein (Austin, Texas) – Vedic astrology. Emphasizes at the outset that the astrological indications are very close, which forces him to resort to more minute distinctions and techniques. He looks at the natal charts of the candidates, the transits on Election Day, and the chart of the US, where he uses the James Kelleher rectification (July 4, 1776, 6:30 PM, Philadelphia). Both candidates running strong Vimshottari dasha periods, activating very important yogas in their charts. Looks at 10th harmonic divisional chart placements, where Romney’s comes out stronger. Deciding factor for him is what he sees as compelling connections between Romney’s chart and the US chart, according to Kelleher’s rectification, with Romney’s Midheaven conjunct the US Moon, and Romney’s ruler of the 10th (Saturn) conjunct US ruler of US 10th (Mercury). Most importantly, according to the chart he uses, Romney and the US are both running nearly identical dasha and bhukti periods on the day of the election. He hedges at the end and says that it is still very close, and he might be wrong. He is the only Vedic astrologer on our list who predicted Romney. The U.S. Presidential Election Prediction, www.dgoldsteinphd.com (website), originally sent out to mailing list on October 25, 2012.

Ed Tamplin (Sydney, Australia) – Modern western astrology. Issued delineations for Obama and Romney in October 2012 on an astrology column on his website, and earlier in the year he issued some statements about different transits that each candidate was having at various points. In some of his earlier columns he seemed to imply that he favored Romney as the winner, although he doesn’t appear to have explicitly stated that Romney will win the election until very recently. His strongest statement from earlier in the year occurred in the September 2012 issue of the Federation of Australian Astrologers Journal (Vol. 42, No. 3, pgs. 23-38), in an article titled “Eye in the Sky: The US Election 2012.” There he said that the eclipse in Scorpio in mid-November will be near Romney’s Moon-Jupiter conjunction, which he said “…may be the single most powerful indicator for a Romney victory.” More recently, in a column on his website on October 28, 2012, in a section titled “Saturn Aspects and the Presidency,” he strongly implies a Romney win, saying “The Midheaven is calculated via the birth time. If Romney is born at 9.51 am, as widely published, it is little wonder he is polling so surprisingly well. On past evidence Saturn is well positioned to deliver Romney the ultimate responsibility.” This is based on his observation that transiting Saturn is often prominent in the charts of presidents when they assume office, and Tamplin notes that on Inauguration Day “…Romney will have Saturn squaring his Midheaven, Venus and birth Saturn.” When contacted directly, Tamplin confirmed that he is predicting that Romney will win the election. Political Astrology Mundane Musings, www.edtamplin.com (website), October 28, 2012.

Sandra Weidner (Michigan?) – Highly idiosyncratic form of modern western astrology. Uses natal charts, relocated solar return charts, conception charts (apparently rectified), sidereal zodiac (Fagan-Bradley ayanamsha), harmonics (7th and 10th?), and only tight applying aspects. Acknowledges at the outset that her approach is non-standard, which is a bit of an understatement, because it is so idiosyncratic that most astrologers would have difficulty following what she is saying. On her home page she says that her method represents a new form of astrology, and she characterizes her articles as provisional research papers, including the election article. Astrology of The 2012 Presidential Election (website), August 12, 2012.

Inconclusive

This category is for astrologers who wrote articles on the election and ultimately came to the conclusion that it was too close to call, largely due to the Mercury retrograde on Election Day, which is similar to what was happening during the contested 2000 election.

Susan Miller (New York, NY) – Modern western astrology. She writes a popular horoscope column called Astrology Zone. She was interviewed by Business Insider, and her prediction appears in a brief article on their website. Her methodology isn’t explained in the article at all, although it appears that her conclusion is largely based on the Mercury retrograde on Election Day. The prediction: “Miller predicts this race will be much like the Al Gore/George W. Bush mess back in 2000, with a ‘too close to call’ race.” Famous Astrologer Gives Us Her Predictions For The Presidential Election, Business Insider (website), June 27, 2012.

Lynn Hayes (Chapel Hill, North Carolina) – Modern western astrology. Wrote a 2 part series on the election, and initially she seems to lean towards Romney in Part 1, but then at the end of Part 2 she concludes that “It looks likely that once again there will be no clear winner in the 2012 election…” Astrologers predict the outcome of the 2012 election: Part II, Astrodynamics (blog), July 2, 2012.

Joni Patry (Dallas, Texas) – Vedic astrology. Towards the beginning of the article she says “I believe there will be a stale mate on Election Day. There will be mass pandemonium over this.” Later she concludes the article by saying “From my synthesis with all the deliberations of analysis we will not know the exact results of the elections initially because there will be chaos, and many events are due to happen between Election Day and the Inauguration Day. Rahu and Ketu change signs between November and January. So the results will change, expect the unexpected. This will be a turning point in history!” Politics in America the 2012 Election, www.galacticcenter.org (website), early September (?) 2012.

Mercury Retrograde on Election Day

Virtually every astrologer who issued a prediction about the election mentioned the fact that Mercury will turn retrograde on Election Day. Most of the statements were very similar in nature, so I didn’t mention them in the summaries above. Mercury retrograde periods are generally associated with delays, miscommunication, uncertainty and technological snafus, and so the fact that one occurs on Election Day this year led most of the astrologers to predict problems and delays. Below I will list a few articles that were specifically written about the Mercury retrograde on Election Day:

Chris Brennan (Denver, Colorado) – The Political Astrology Blog’s official article on the subject is titled Mercury Retrograde and the 2012 Election. We explain in this article what it means for Mercury to turn retrograde, and talk about instances in the past when Mercury has been retrograde on Election Day, such as during the 2000 and 1960 elections.

Jessica Adams (Sydney/London) – Excellent discussion about the Mercury retrograde and its implications, and in particular some good coverage of predictions that several astrologers made prior to the 2000 election involving Mercury retrograde that turned out to be true. Astrology Prediction – 2012 Election, JessicaAdams.com (blog), September 18, 2012.

Michael Lutin (New York, NY) – Popular astrology columnist, and former astrologer for Vanity Fair. He was one of the astrologers who predicted that there would be problems during the 2000 election due to the Mercury retrograde then, as Adams discusses in the article above. He has a couple of articles on the November 2012 Mercury retrograde and its implications for the election in his mundane astrology column on his website called The Horoscope of the World: one on June 4, 2012 titled “November 6, Retrograde Mercury and Martial Law?”, and one on October 23, 2012 titled “Election Day in America: Electile Dysfunction.”

The Associated Press produced a video about the United Astrology Conference in May 2012 where they talked to a few astrologers, and in the beginning it briefly covers the Mercury retrograde on Election Day and the parallel with Election Day in 2000. Michael Lutin makes a few statements about the retrograde in the video. Astrologers Predict Outcome of Presidential Race, May 24, 2012.

Alex Miller (Philadelphia, PA) – Wrote a piece for The Mountain Astrologer magazine’s blog on October 1, 2012 titled Election Day’s Mercury Station. His discussion about black holes is kind of non-standard, since most astrologers don’t take them into account, but he does mention weather as potentially being an issue, which is interesting at this point in late October with the formation of Hurricane Sandy.

Anne Ortelee (New York, NY) – She was interviewed by Now This News, and they did a video on Mercury retrograde. At the end she predicts that Romney will win, although she almost seems to do so based on Mercury being retrograde, and it isn’t clear what other techniques she applied. Astrology Predicts Election ‘Chaos’, October 10, 2012.

Eric Francis (Kingston, New York) – Wrote a piece on Mercury retrograde for the Huffington Post on October 3, 2012 titled Mercury Retrograde Election Day. Points out that Mercury has never stationed retrograde right on Election Day before in the US.

Chase Cain of Fox 35 News, a Fox News affiliate in Orlando, Florida, did a piece on Mercury retrograde in mid-October. At one point they interview an astrologer/psychic named Ginny Stern. Astrological signs point to ‘disastrous’ election, October 17, 2012.

Other Roundups

I’ve been working on this roundup article for a few months now, and in the meantime a few other roundups have been published by other astrologers. In some instances they came across predictions that I hadn’t, which I subsequently included in my list, so I would like to acknowledge those other roundups here, in the order in which they were published:

Conclusions

Based on this survey, it appears that the majority of astrologers who have issued public predictions about the outcome of the 2012 presidential election believe that Barack Obama will be reelected to a second term of office in November.

However, nearly every astrologer who has issued a prediction, either for Obama or Romney, has also made a point to mention the Mercury retrograde on Election Day, and there is near universal consensus that this will coincide with some problems and potentially some delays in the electoral process next month.

]]>http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/10/29/astrologers-predict-the-2012-election-roundup/feed/42http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/10/29/astrologers-predict-the-2012-election-roundup/Void of Course Moon During Obama’s Nominationhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ThePoliticalAstrologyBlog/~3/D7uh0-i2PM8/
http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/10/18/void-of-course-moon-during-obamas-nomination/#commentsFri, 19 Oct 2012 02:33:27 +0000http://politicalastrologyblog.com/?p=6328Barack Obama was nominated for a second term as President during the Democratic National Convention last month while the Moon was void of course.
He then accepted the nomination the following night, also under a void ...

]]>Barack Obama was nominated for a second term as President during the Democratic National Convention last month while the Moon was void of course.

He then accepted the nomination the following night, also under a void of course Moon.

Some astrologers have interpreted the void of course Moon during Obama’s nomination as a sure sign that he will lose the election next month.

There are several problems with this assumption though.

I originally tried to dispel some of the hype surrounding the void Moon at Obama’s nomination in an article on the DNC last month, although I’ve noticed that some of the claims regarding it have still persisted.

In this article I would like to revisit the subject again in order to explain why the writers of The Political Astrology Blog do not think that the void of course Moon during Obama’s nomination indicates that he will lose the election.

What is the Void of Course Moon?

According to the definition that is used by most astrologers today, the Moon goes “void of course” as soon as it completes the last major aspect that it will make before moving into the next sign of the zodiac.

This happens very frequently, every two or three days, although the length of the void of course period varies, lasting anywhere from a few minutes to a day or two.

Was the Moon Void of Course During Obama’s Nomination?

During the week of the DNC, the Moon went void of course in Taurus on September 5, 2012, starting at 2:56 PM EDT, in Charlotte, North Carolina. The void period lasted until 12:10 AM on September 7, when the Moon moved into Gemini.

Obama officially received enough votes from the delegates in order to become the party’s nominee at exactly 12:09 AM EDT, on September 6. The Moon was at 18° Taurus, and it was in fact void of course at the time. See the chart to the right.

Obama accepted the nomination later on September 6, at exactly 10:26 PM EDT. The Moon was at 29° Taurus, and it was still void of course. Click here for the chart.

So, according to the contemporary definition, the Moon was in fact void of course during both the nomination itself, as well as during Obama’s subsequent acceptance of the nomination.

Why is the Void Moon Supposed to be a Bad Omen?

The void of course Moon is usually thought to be a negative indication in a chart, which signifies that nothing will come of the matter that is initiated at that time.

For example, the following statement by the famous 17th century astrologer William Lilly is often cited in discussions about the void of course Moon:

A planet is Void of Course, when he is separated from a planet, nor doth forthwith, during his being in that sign, apply to any other: This is most usually in the Moon; In judgements do you carefully observe whether she be Void of Course yea or no; you shall seldom see a business go handsomely forward when she is so.

- William Lilly, Christian Astrology, 1647, pg. 112.

Elsewhere Lilly talks about the void Moon within the context of horary astrology:

Generally consider the state of the Moon, for if she be Void of Course there’s no great hopes of the question propounded, that it shall be effected…

- William Lilly, Christian Astrology, 1647, pg. 299.

So, generally speaking, the notion is that whatever begins during a void of course Moon will either have serious difficulties in coming to fruition, or it will fall short of its intended goal.

Al Morrison and the Void of Course Moon

In the early 20th century the void of course Moon was sometimes mentioned as one of many considerations, especially in horary astrology, although it wasn’t given a lot of emphasis in day-to-day use. That is, until an astrologer named Al Morrison came along.

Morrison adopted the definition of the void of course Moon mentioned by Lilly, and he made it his personal mission to promote the concept as something that all astrologers should pay attention to on a daily basis. He wrote a number of articles on the subject, and he produced an annual void of course Moon calendar, which according to one biography he

…sent to hundreds of people without charge, along with notes urging them to look into it.

Prior to Morrison, the void of course Moon wasn’t usually mentioned in most astrological calendars, but by the time he died in the mid-1990s it was.

The concept gained a wide degree of currency in the astrological community, partially because it is so simple, but also because the predictions surrounding it were often so dire. It was essentially interpreted to mean something to the effect of “if you start something during this time, it will fail.”

Morrison’s Statement About the Void Moon During Nominations

In the 1982 book Secrets from a Stargazer’s Notebook, astrologer Debbi Kempton-Smith has a chapter on the void of course Moon, and in it she quotes a long except from one of Al Morrison’s writings on the subject. At one point during the course of this except, Morrison made the following claim:

In every presidential election from 1900 through 1972 one of the two major party candidates was nominated with the Moon void of course. Every one of the candidates nominated with the Moon void of course lost. Jimmy Carter’s 1980 nomination [also] came in a Void of Course Moon.

On her website Debbie Kempton-Smith adds an update to this paragraph, saying that “John Kerry’s 2004 nomination and Al Gore’s 2000 nomination came in a Void of Course Moon” as well.

The implication here is that every presidential nomination that has occurred in the past century under a void of course Moon has resulted in the defeat of the candidate who was nominated at that time.

Quite a claim. But is it true?

The Veracity of Morrison’s Claim

In the past month Morrison’s claim has become widely cited in the astrological community, as quoted in Debbie Kempton-Smith’s book, due to the fact that Obama was nominated during a void of course Moon, while his challenger, Mitt Romney, was not.

At least one astrologer has predicted that Romney will win the election based primarily on the fact that the Moon was void at the time of Obama’s nomination, and due to Morrison’s claim regarding that. Judging by the comments that we’ve been getting here on The Political Astrology Blog, there seem to be a number of other astrologers who are making the same assumption as well. Romney supporters in particular seem to be repeating the claim with much gusto.

No one seems to have stopped to ask the question of whether Morrison’s claim is true though. Once that question is raised, three issues come up immediately:

The claim is impossible to verify, and indeed no one has verified it completely, because we do not have nomination times for every presidential candidate going back to the year 1900.

It is extremely unlikely that Morrison himself knew the exact time that every candidate was nominated all the way back to 1900, especially since they didn’t even start broadcasting the conventions over the radio until 1924.

The claim has never been fully substantiated, because it is just a claim, and neither Morrison nor anyone else has written a paper or a book showing the data that demonstrates that it is true.

What we have, then, is essentially an implausible claim that has never been fully substantiated, and unfortunately a lot of people are just taking Morrison’s word for it.

This situation is made even more problematic by the fact that it isn’t really even clear where Morrison originally made the statement. In her book Debbie Kempton-Smith is apparently quoting Morrison, but she doesn’t say from where. I contacted her by email a few weeks ago, and she seemed to say that the quote came from one of his annual void of course Moon ephemerides, although she didn’t specify which one, or what year it was published.

What is really weird about this though is that Morrison wrote about the void of course Moon several times during the course of his career in different publications, and I cannot find any references to this claim about the void of course Moon and nomination times in the other publications.

Karen Christino published a collection of Morrison’s writings in 2006 titled The Best of Al H. Morrison, and in it there is a chapter on the void of course Moon which contains four different pieces from Morrison on the subject, but none of them mention this interesting tidbit about the presidential nominations.

The pieces in Christino’s book span from 1966 to 1995, which is surely a broad enough cross-section of his career that you would think that it should have been mentioned in at least one of them, especially since Kempton-Smith’s quote was published right in the middle, in 1982. The claim isn’t mentioned in any of those pieces though.

This raises a number of questions:

Why didn’t Morrison mention the claim in his other writings?

Was he not prepared to have it fact-checked?

Or was it not something that he was sure about?

Maybe he never intended to put it out there as anything more than a speculation?

Perhaps he did not think that the statement would receive as much circulation as it has as a result of Debbie Kempton-Smith’s book? Remember that no one is quoting Morrison directly, but instead they are all quoting Morrison via Debbie Kempton-Smith.

I’m not sure that we will be able to answer these questions, but based on the considerations above, we are still left with the uncomfortable conclusion that it seems like there is something highly questionable about Morrison’s claim.

Other Issues with the Void of Course Moon

Aside from the issues with the veracity of Morrison’s claim, there are a number of other reasons to doubt the current narrative that the void of course Moon at the time of Obama’s nomination indicates that he will lose the election:

1. Obama’s Past Instances of Success Under Void Moons

Obama has historically done pretty well when he has launched things during void of course Moon periods in the past. For example, as my co-writer Patrick Watson pointed out back in 2009, Obama launched his 2008 presidential campaign under a void of course Moon, and that turned out to be one of the most successful political campaigns in modern history.

One could also point out that he announced Joe Biden as his running mate during a void Moon, and he was also inaugurated under a void Moon, although I can anticipate that some might want to argue whether those two things can be considered to have been successful.

The success of his 2008 presidential campaign, which was launched under a void Moon, isn’t really a point that can be argued though.

2. Exceptions to the Void Moon Rule

Even though William Lilly’s statements about the meaning of the void of course Moon are often quoted in order to emphasize how negative the placement is supposed to be, those who quote him often seem to overlook the fact that Lilly also said that there were some specific exceptions to the void of course Moon rule.

Specifically, here is the full version of one of the quotes I used from Lilly above:

Generally consider the state of the Moon, for if she be Void of Course there’s no great hopes of the question propounded, that it shall be effected, yet if she be in Cancer, Taurus, Sagittarius or Pisces, your fear may be the less, for then she is not so much impedited by being Void of Course.

- William Lilly, Christian Astrology, 1647, pg. 299.

In other words, according to Lilly, a void of course Moon placement is problematic, unless the Moon happens to be in Cancer, Taurus, Sagittarius, or Pisces.

What sign was the Moon in when Obama was nominated? Taurus.

3. Different Definitions of Void of Course

The final, and perhaps most important issue, is that there are two or three different definitions of void of course, and the contemporary definition is not the original, nor necessarily even the most accurate one.

Recent translations of some ancient Greek texts from the first few centuries of the Common Era have shown that the original definition of the void of course Moon is that the Moon does not complete any exact Ptolemaic aspect with any other planet within the next 30 degrees, regardless of sign boundaries.

Unlike the modern definition, this is a pretty rare occurrence, although it does happen every once in a while. It essentially means that the Moon won’t form any configurations for the next two days, and that is why it was originally referred to as “running in the emptiness” (kenodromia) in Greek.

It appears that the definition of void of course changed at some point during the Medieval period, and that is when something more along the lines of the modern definition emerged. Unfortunately we don’t really know why the definition changed. It could have been a mistake, perhaps due to a mistranslation.

The difference between the ancient and the modern definition is important because when people like Al Morrison sometimes cite ancient Roman authors such as Firmicus Maternus for their delineations of what the void of course Moon means astrologically, they don’t realize that the ancient authors were using a definition that is completely different than the modern one.

Recap and Conclusion

To summarize my main points here very briefly:

Morrison’s claim about presidential nomination times is questionable, and has never been fully demonstrated.

If you are going to use the modern definition of void of course that comes from Medieval and Renaissance authors, then you should also take into account the fact that they said that there were exceptions to the rule, such as if the Moon is void in Taurus.

There are different definitions of void of course, and the contemporary definition is not the original one, nor is it necessarily the most accurate. While there are some astrologers who have followed Morrison’s lead in attributing a lot of significance to the modern definition of the void of course Moon, there are many others who do not see it as being terribly important. The difference between the ancient and modern definitions may explain this discrepancy.

Now, to be clear, I don’t have any problems with anyone who still thinks that there is something to the modern definition of the void of course Moon, and that based on that they think that it is a negative indication for Obama’s chances of winning his re-election campaign next month.

I would just encourage you to be very careful about putting too much faith into just that one indication, especially if you are doing so based on Morrison’s claim.

]]>http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/10/18/void-of-course-moon-during-obamas-nomination/feed/21http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/10/18/void-of-course-moon-during-obamas-nomination/New Book on Political Astrology Releasedhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ThePoliticalAstrologyBlog/~3/zqHJkM-h8ks/
http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/10/16/new-book-on-political-astrology-released/#commentsTue, 16 Oct 2012 21:49:12 +0000http://politicalastrologyblog.com/?p=6245Today we are excited to announce the release of our new ebook, titled The Political Astrology Blog Guide to Astrology.
We wrote this book because there are not many books out there which specifically deal with ...

We wrote this book because there are not many books out there which specifically deal with the application of astrology to politics.

Additionally, we wanted to write a book for those who are just finding our blog now, and would like to learn more about the basics of astrology, but aren’t sure where to get started.

We tried to make the book accessible to people who don’t know much more than their Sun-sign, while at the same time including a lot of material for intermediate and advanced students of astrology.

Most of all, we wanted to outline the basics of the approach to astrology that we take when writing articles here on the Political Astrology Blog, for those who want to learn more about our methods.

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned professional, left, right or center politically, or just curious, there really is something for everyone. In short, if you enjoy reading our articles, then this ebook should be be right up your alley!

The eBook Includes the Following:

A full explanation of our particular approach to transits and planetary cycles, filled with real examples from well-known political figures and events.

A tutorial on the practical application of the predictive technique known as annual profections.

A chapter on different approaches to predicting presidential elections, with discussions on the relative merits of each approach.

A detailed introduction to the interpretation of the planets, signs, houses and aspects.

A chapter on the history of the relationship between astrology and politics.

An overview of the different branches of astrology.

An overview of the different traditions of astrology.

An in-depth look at the philosophy of astrology, and more!

The book is 117 pages long, plus 25 pages of diagrams and illustrations, in PDF format.

Ordering the Book

During the launch, the book is currently on sale for just $10.

Payment is handled through Paypal, and you can use a credit card if you wish. You will receive an email with a link to download the book immediately upon completing your payment.

]]>http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/10/16/new-book-on-political-astrology-released/feed/1http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/10/16/new-book-on-political-astrology-released/The Astrology of the Presidential Debateshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ThePoliticalAstrologyBlog/~3/eDB5Q8EOI7g/
http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/10/02/the-astrology-of-the-presidential-debates/#commentsTue, 02 Oct 2012 14:53:53 +0000http://politicalastrologyblog.com/?p=6075The first of the four presidential debates for the 2012 election begins tomorrow, and the purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the astrology of the debates.
This article will cover some of ...

The first of the four presidential debates for the 2012 election begins tomorrow, and the purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the astrology of the debates.

This article will cover some of the astrological highlights of the four debates, which includes a discussion of the inception chart for the beginning of each debate, as well as an analysis of significant transits that each of the candidates will be having on each debate night.

Each section will be concluded with a summary of our observations about the key astrological signatures for each debate, and who we think will come out on top.

Schedule for the Presidential Debates

Each debate will begin at 9:00 PM EDT, and then end at 10:30 PM, although the local time will vary depending on the location. Here is the schedule for the debates:

The first debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is supposed to focus on domestic policy.

The Inception Chart for the First Debate

The first debate begins with 22 Aries rising in Denver.

The main signature in the chart is the applying Moon-Mars opposition, with the Moon at 24° Taurus and Mars at 27° Scorpio. This is a repetition of the same configuration that was occurring during the DNC last month. The Moon here is actually very close to the same degree as when Obama accepted the nomination. The Moon will conjoin the ascendant exactly right at the end of the debate.

The second most striking placement in the chart is that Venus moves into Virgo the day of the debate. At the time that the debate begins the closest aspect in the chart is Venus at 0° Virgo opposing Neptune at 0° Pisces, within 8 minutes of arc. This Venus-Neptune opposition is one of the main signatures for the first debate, since it is the closest aspect in the chart.

This is the only debate that will take place while Saturn is still in Libra.

Another signature is Mercury conjunct Saturn, with Mercury at 27° Libra and Saturn at 29°. This conjunction will set at the descendant very early on in the debate, between 7:13 and 7:20 PM in Denver. Traditionally Mercury-Saturn combinations are associated with difficulties in communication, which in this context might mean some sort of verbal gaffe, or perhaps one of the candidates literally having problems speaking.

Around 7:20-7:21 the ascendant moves into Taurus, which almost seems to indicate a change in the mood or tone of the debate, from this tense or very serious Saturn on the descendant to a more relaxed or lighthearted Venus at 0° Virgo trining the ascendant.

Although it isn’t playing a very major role in the chart for the debate itself, Jupiter stations retrograde early the next morning, which is very significant. Interestingly, it doesn’t station direct until late January, just after the inauguration. This seems to reflect a close connection between this particular debate and who is sworn into office on inauguration day.

Obama’s Transits

Mars conjunct MC – Mars at 27° Scorpio is conjoining Obama’s natal Midheaven at 28 Scorpio. Some astrologers might interpret this as being a negative transit for Obama to have, however, Obama was born at night, and so according to the concept of sect his Mars transits are much less negative. It is also worth noting that Mars is the ruler of his 10th house. So, on this night the ruler of his 10th conjoins the MC, which is rather auspicious.

The north node is also in Scorpio, at 26 degrees, conjunct Mars at 27°. This is squaring his natal north node at 27° Leo. So, he has a transiting Mars-Node conjunction in his 10th, square his nodes.

Moon square Uranus – Transiting Moon at 24° Taurus is applying to a square with his natal Uranus at 25° Leo. This actually goes exact during the debate at 8:09 PM. Usually a transit like this reflects an unexpected development or surprise.

Moon trine Saturn – Transiting Moon trine Saturn goes exact at 8:17 PM, right towards the end of the debate. This is a more positive transit for Obama, especially with Saturn ruling his ascendant. It is almost like Romney does something unexpected that unsettles Obama, but then Obama regains his stride a few minutes later.

Venus sextile Venus – Transiting Venus is important for Obama because it is activated as the lord of the year for him since his birthday in August. It is striking that it has just moved into Virgo right before this debate, sort of like how it just moved into Leo right before he accepted the nomination at the convention. During the debate transiting Venus at zero Virgo is applying to a sextile his natal Venus at 1 Cancer, which is generally an auspicious transit.

Jupiter trine ASC – Transiting Jupiter, which stations retrograde a few hours after the debate, is trine to Obama’s ascendant within about a degree and a half.

Romney’s Transits

Mars conjunct Moon/Jupiter – Romney’s closest transit when the debate begins is transiting Mars at 27° Scorpio conjunct his natal Moon-Jupiter conjunction at 27° Scorpio. The Mars-Moon transit is within 8 minutes of arc. This is problematic since he was born during the day, so Mars is the most malefic planet for Romney. All the more so since Jupiter rules the 10th whole sign house.

Jupiter conjunct Uranus – Transiting Jupiter at 16° Gemini, which stations retrograde just a few hours after the debate, is conjoining his his natal Uranus at 17° Gemini, within about a degree and a half. This is more of a positive transit for Romney because it usually indicates unexpected or sudden benefits. This Jupiter station is also important because it is a recurrence transit for Romney, since he was born about 1 day away from a Jupiter retrograde station, and the debate itself is being held within a degree of a Jupiter retrograde station. This particular station is important because it is occurring in his 1st house.

Other than that, Romney doesn’t have a lot of significant transits going on at the time that are specific to the debate. There are a few outer planet transits, but these are long-term, and some of them become more exact during later debates, so we will discuss them there. Other inner planet transits on this date, like transiting Sun conjunct Neptune, are separating, and are more than a degree or two away from exact, so it is not clear if they are relevant for the debate.

First Debate Conclusions

The Moon-Mars opposition seems to indicate combativeness as a major signature of this debate.

Ultimately Obama seems to have better career transits for the first debate, with transiting Mars conjoining his MC in his nocturnal birth chart, versus Romney having transiting Mars conjoin his Moon and Jupiter (which rules his 10th) in a diurnal birth chart.

Obama may still be in for some surprises though, with the Moon square his natal Uranus, and transiting Jupiter stationing conjunct Romney’s natal Uranus in the 1st.

The Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan is supposed to focus on both foreign and domestic policy.

***Update: This section on the VP debate was revised on October 4, 2012 after a reader named Tracy pointed out in the comments section below that the original time that we were using for this debate was an hour off, due to a mistake we made in placing Danville in CDT rather than EDT. This section has been updated accordingly to reflect the 1 hour difference.***

Inception Chart for the VP Debate

The debate is set to begin at 9:00 PM in Danville, and at that time the ascendant will be at 29°50′ Taurus. If the debate starts just 30 seconds later, after 9:00:34 PM, then the ascendant will be at 0° Gemini. We will have to see what happens, although we strongly suspect that they will end up starting the debate after the ascendant has moved into Gemini, and so the horoscope or chart for the debate to the right reflects that placement rather than the Taurus rising chart. The only counter-argument against doing this might be the fact that the Moon was at 29° Taurus when Obama first announced that he had chosen Biden as his running mate in 2008.

Moon square Mars, applying, and only 19 minutes of arc from exact when the debate begins. This is the main signature in the chart. It is interesting because the Moon opposing Mars was one of the main signatures in the first debate, although it wasn’t as close to exact as in this chart. This seems to imply that this debate is even more combative than the first one. The Moon-Mars square goes exact at 9:35 PM in Danville, just over 30 minutes into the debate. This is also important because both Biden and Ryan have early Sagittarius rising in their birth charts, and Mars will be at at 3° Sagittarius, right on both of their ascendants.

Transiting ascendant square Neptune goes exact at 9:02 PM, right as the debate begins. Neptune also becomes prominent again at the very end of the debate when it reaches the MC, which seems to make it one of the other major signatures in the chart, especially since it is part of a T-square with the Moon and Mars. Neptune usually has to do with deception, and so it seems that one of the other major themes of the debate will be issues surrounding lying or dishonesty.

The transiting MC squares Mercury exactly at 9:02 PM, also right as the debate begins.

Mars conjoins the descendant exactly and sets over the western horizon at 9:12 PM. Moon square ascendant at the same time.

The ascendant squares Venus at 9:36. This is is right when the Moon-Mars square goes exact as well.

MC trine Sun at 9:41.

Transiting ascendant conjunct Jupiter at 9:59 PM. This is one of the most positive hits to the angles during the course of the evening, and it will be interesting to see if one of them doesn’t say something around this time that ends up playing very well with the public and the press.

Ascendant trine Sun at 10:11.

MC moves into Pisces and conjoins Neptune 10:23-10:27. Maybe some specific instance of lying or dishonesty around this time?

The MC squares Mars exactly and around 10:36, although the debate is supposed to be over by this time.

Biden’s Transits

Moon square Uranus – This transit goes exact for Biden about 45 minutes before the debate begins. Obama also had the same transit during the first debate, and it was also to a 7th house Uranus placement. Perhaps somehow Ryan surprises Biden with something as well.

Moon square Ascendant – This goes exact right after the debate begins.

Saturn opposite Moon – Second closest transit is Saturn at 0° Scorpio applying to oppose natal Moon at 0° Taurus within 15 minutes of arc. He has a day chart, but still not a very positive transit to be having.

Mars conjunct Ascendant – Third closest transit is transiting Mars at 3° Sagittarius conjunct Biden’s ascendant at 3° Sagittarius. This is problematic since he was born during the day, and thus Mars is more malefic. Transiting Mars is also opposing his natal Uranus at 2° Gemini at this time, separating, although within 41 minutes of arc, which is even more problematic. This is the type of transit that tends to coincide with someone being more aggressive than normal, sometimes with sudden outbursts.

Biden is having a Sun-Jupiter recurrence transit. He was born with the Sun trine to Jupiter within about 2 degrees, with the Sun on the left side, and then the debate takes place when the Sun and Jupiter are also trine again, about 2 degrees away.

The transiting MC at the beginning of the debate is very closely conjoining Ryan’s Sun/Venus conjunction at 9°/10° Aquarius, which seems very positive for him.

Mars trine Mars – Transiting Mars at 3° Sagittarius trine natal Mars at 3° Aries, separating, but only 11 minutes of arc from exact. This one is important since his natal Mars is very well-placed, by sign, house, sect, etc.

Mercury square Sun & Venus – Transiting Mercury at 9° Scorpio very closely square his natal Sun at 9° Aquarius and Venus at 10° Aquarius. This quite positive, and also potentially important because Mercury is activated as the lord of the year. It is very good for communication and getting one’s point across in an elegant manner.

Moon trine Saturn – Transiting Moon at 3° Virgo trine Saturn at 2° Taurus, separating, 31 minutes from exact. This is an interesting contrast with Biden’s Moon square Uranus transit before the debate, because Moon trine Saturn tends to be more calming and stable, whereas Moon square Uranus can make a person kind of jittery and uneven.

Jupiter square MC – Transiting Jupiter at 16° Gemini is square his MC at 17° Virgo, just over a degree away. Positive career transit.

Saturn opposite Saturn – Saturn’s ingress into Scorpio the week before the debate triggers the opposition to his natal Saturn at 2° Taurus. This is interesting because he was first elected to public office at his Saturn return. This transit is less specific to the debate though because it doesn’t go exact until closer to the election, although it is relevant for this entire period in his life from October forward.

Conclusions About the VP Debate

This looks like it has the potential to be a highly contentious debate due to the Moon-Mars square that goes exact that night, as well as the transit of Mars over the ascendant of both candidates.

Biden’s transits seem to be distinctly more difficult, and some of the Mars transits make it look like he might lose his cool at some point during the debate.

Ryan, on the other hand, seems to have much more favorable transits in general, and we would expect him to handle the Mars transit better than Biden, both because he was born at night, as well as the fact that transiting Mars will be trine his natal Mars that night.

Two main themes show up very strongly in the inception chart for the debate itself: 1) Neptune, which will probably bring up issues surrounding deception or dishonesty, and 2) Mars, which will bring out themes having to do with anger or aggression.

What is interesting is that Ryan seems to be the one who is having the closer Neptune transits that night, whereas Biden is the one who is having the closer Mars transits. It is almost as if there is something about the way that Ryan embodies Neptune that night, either in a positive sense through his idealism or in a negative sense by being dishonest, which rubs Biden the wrong way, and results in him becoming very agitated or angry. Either way, we look forward to seeing some fireworks that night.

Second Presidential Debate – October 16, 2012 at 9:00 PM in Hempstead, NY

The second presidential debate will have a town hall format where audience members will pose questions to the candidates on foreign and domestic policy issues.

Inception Chart for the Second Presidential Debate

At the beginning of the debate 19° Gemini is rising with Jupiter having just risen over the ascendant. This is similar to the chart from a month ago at the DNC when Obama got enough votes to be confirmed as the Democratic nominee.

Moon conjunct Mercury – The main signature is the Moon at 15° Scorpio applying to a conjunction with Mercury at 16° Scorpio. Before the Moon conjoins Mercury it completes a sextile with Venus, which goes exact at 10:15 PM, towards the end of the debate, and then right after that the Moon conjoins Mercury, at 10:23.

The MC conjoins Neptune at 9:21 PM, then MC square Mars at 9:46, ASC square Uranus at 10:09, Pluto conjunct descendant at 10:15, Jupiter square MC at 10:19, then Venus conjoins the IC at 10:20 and Moon-Mercury trining the MC at the exact same time. This last string of hits around 10:20 seems to be an important point in the debate.

Obama’s Transits

The Moon-Mercury conjunction in mid-Scorpio in the debate chart takes place in his 10th whole sign house.

This will be the first presidential debate after Saturn moves into his 10th whole sign house (Scorpio).

Saturn trine Venus, square Jupiter – Transiting Saturn at 1° Scorpio is closely trining his natal Venus at 1° Cancer, which is positive, although it is also squaring his natal Jupiter at 0° Aquarius at this time as well.

Mars square Pluto – Obama’s closest transit on this night is Mars square Pluto, within 5 minutes of arc, separating. We’re not really sure what to make of this, although it doesn’t generally sound good.

Sun sextile Uranus, square Saturn – Transiting Sun at 24 Libra is sextile his natal Uranus at 25 Leo, and square his natal Saturn at 25 Capricorn. The latter is not a very great transit to be having, as it can coincide with a brief period of not feeling like you are on top of your game.

Romney’s Transits

Mars square Mars – Romney’s closest transit on this night is transiting Mars at 7° Sagittarius square natal Mars at 6° Pisces, separating, about 50 minutes of arc away. This is problematic since he was born during the day, and Mars is in his 10th house natally. Some of the edge is taken off of this by the fact that Mars then applies to a sextile with his natal Venus and MC at 8 Aquarius, although this doesn’t go exact until 2 days later.

Moon trine Mercury – Transiting Moon at 15 Scorpio is separating from a trine with his natal Mercury at 13 Pisces, about a degree and a half away.

Venus square Uranus – Transiting Venus is applying to square his natal Uranus in the 1st, 1 degree and 40 minutes of arc from exact. Not sure if this applies to the debate itself or something that takes place after it.

Conclusion About the Second Presidential Debate

Neither candidate is really having great transits on the night of the second debate, so it is almost a matter of determining who is doing worse.

We would almost have to give this one to Romney because he seems to have fewer negative transits, except that the one that he does have (Mars square Mars in the 10th) is much more overtly problematic than Obama’s (Mars square Pluto, Sun square Saturn).

Based on that, it seems that Obama has the edge here, although it doesn’t look like he will come out completely unscathed.

The final debate will focus on foreign policy, and the format is supposed to be the same as the first debate.

The Inception Chart for the Final Debate

Mars opposite ASC – The debate begins with 9° Gemini rising, with Mars right on the descendant at 11° Sagittarius, and Jupiter somewhat close to the ascendant at 15° Gemini.

Our initial impression was that this would be less contentious than the first debate or the VP debate, because Mars is not making a hard aspect with the Moon; however, this is the only debate where Mars is right on the descendant when it begins. Jupiter is in the 1st though, so there is some tension there, almost as if one of them tries to go on the attack and then the other tries to play it straight.

The Sun ingresses into Scorpio about 45 minutes before the debate begins.

The Moon is at 11° Aquarius, and it closely applies to sextile with Mars at 11° Sagittarius very early on in the debate.

One might think that the Sun-Saturn conjunction would indicate a more sober or restrained debate, although the Mars placement on the descendant seems more combative. Perhaps this reiterates the potential dynamic that we mentioned earlier with one person being more aggressive and the other being more restrained.

Mars hits descendant at 9:05 PM, then Moon completes sextile with Mars at 9:15, Jupiter hits ascendant at 9:23 and Neptune conjoins the MC at the same moment. Venus square ascendant at 9:54, Mars squares the MC at 10:04, Jupiter square MC at 10:20. Ascendant switches into Cancer at 10:23.

Obama’s Transits

Saturn trine Venus – Obama’s closest transit during the final debate is transiting Saturn at 2° Scorpio in his 10th house trine his natal Venus at 1° Cancer, separating, within 16 minutes of arc.

Saturn square Mercury – Second closest transit is transiting Saturn at 2° Scorpio square his natal Mercury at 2° Leo, applying within 16 minutes of arc. This is a more difficult transit, perhaps making it harder for him to get his points across during the debate.

Venus conjunct Mars – Transiting Venus at 23° Virgo conjunct natal Mars at 22° Virgo, separating, 48 minutes of arc away. This is important than it might appear at first glance because Venus is ruler of the year, and it is conjoining the ruler of his 10th. Since he has a night chart Venus is also the most positive planet for him, so it is like a positive 10th house transit.

Mercury sextile Mars – Transiting Mercury at 23° Scorpio sextile Mars, separating, just over a degree apart. This may help to counteract the communication difficulties that might otherwise be indicated by the Saturn-Mercury square mentioned earlier.

He has a bunch of positive-looking transits that don’t go exact at the time of the debate, but they come into effect at that time, and then go exact in the following days: transiting Mercury square Uranus, Mercury sextile Saturn, Sun trine Venus, Venus trine Saturn.

Romney’s Transits

Mars trine Pluto – Romney’s closest transit on the night of the final debate is transiting Mars trine Pluto, within 3 minutes of arc, separating. Gives him an extra bit of tenacity.

Moon opposing Pluto – Transiting Moon at 11° Aquarius applying to an opposition with natal Pluto at 11° Leo, within 6 minutes of arc. This goes exact at 9:10 PM, just a few minutes after the debate begins. The Moon is also separating from a conjunction with his natal MC and Venus at 8 Aquarius, although this is a few degrees away by the time the debate begins.

Saturn square Saturn – Transiting Saturn square natal Saturn, applying within 20 minutes of arc. He was born during the day, so this isn’t the most difficult transit, but it isn’t great.

Transiting Jupiter is applying to a retrograde square with his natal Mercury, although this has been in effect all month due to the station, and it is still about 2 degrees away.

Final Debate Conclusion

Obama has a lot of close transits occurring during the final debate, whereas Romney doesn’t really have many for some reason.

Additionally, Obama’s transits seem to be more decidedly positive and noteworthy, whereas the only really noteworthy one that Romney is having is the Saturn square Saturn transit, although that is hardly indicative of a major victory.

It would appear that the final debate will go to Obama.

Final Remarks

In this analysis we primarily focused on the transits that each candidate will have on the night of each debate, and we didn’t take into account other techniques that could provide additional perspectives on the situation.

For example, in our official look at the astrology of the 2012 election we noted that Romney goes into a difficult period just before the second debate, according to a different technique, and things looked like they would go downhill for him after that.

Our analysis in the present article is a bit more nuanced, although generally it does still seem like Obama has the better transits in just about every debate, except for the Vice Presidential debate, where Ryan does seem to have the edge.

We will be following the debates closely with our team of astrologers, and we may do some live-blogging or recaps of individual debates, so be sure to check back here often during the course of the month for updates.

]]>http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/10/02/the-astrology-of-the-presidential-debates/feed/45http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/10/02/the-astrology-of-the-presidential-debates/Podcast on the Astrology of the Presidential Electionhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ThePoliticalAstrologyBlog/~3/YgFHcQgJtzM/
http://politicalastrologyblog.com/2012/09/19/podcast-on-the-astrology-of-the-presidential-election/#commentsWed, 19 Sep 2012 12:38:42 +0000http://politicalastrologyblog.com/?p=5984Patrick Watson and I just finished recording a two hour podcast on the astrology of the 2012 presidential election for a new show called The Astrology Podcast.
You can download the episode on the presidential election ...

Frequent readers of The Political Astrology Blog will be familiar with many of the topics that we discussed in the podcast, since it was mainly meant to provide an overview of the astrology surrounding the election, although we also discussed some topics that we haven’t covered here yet on this blog.

During the course of the episode we talk about different approaches to forecasting the outcome of presidential elections, as well the particular approach that we took when researching our own prediction.

We also discussed other topics such as Obama and Romney’s natal charts, the inception charts for the RNC and DNC, the Mercury retrograde on Election Day, and the ominous looking chart for the inauguration on January 20, 2013.